Storytime

It rolls around each year. The day we are meant to celebrate our fathers. Praise them to the skies. Buy them useless presents like socks and chocolates and soap on a rope (who on earth invented this and why!) And if you are a father you are meant to sit back and lap it all up. It's a day that frustrates me like Mother's Day and to a certain extent, Valentines Day. These Hallmarked days that tell you who to praise/ love and if you haven't got a father/ mother / lover or if you aren't yourself a mother/ father/ lover ..how much of a loser you are. Don't get me wrong it's always nice to get a phone call and a visit from your children, but that is just lovely on any day. Not a specifically designated day chosen by a commercially avid world. Rant over. I did phone my father on this special day. Had thought of a visit but due to my heavy cold and the fact that he's only recently out of hospital, figured it wasn't the best idea. Then I became designa...

It was Father's Day recently and along with the 'hello how are you phone call' and chat to my dad, and our children coming up to spend the day with their father...it always brings to mind what are my strongest childhood memories of my dad. Fishing...digging for worms and teaching us how to bait a hook because he wasn't going to do all of our lines! Gardening...both my parents were keen gardeners and my sister and I have both got the bug. And then there was reading. We had this huge book of Fairy Tales..not your pretty and dainty tales, these were the original Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson tales full of witches and dark tormented forests and slicing feet to fit into slippers. Still remember the Tinderbox and the dog with eyes as big as saucers.... Dad would read to us. We loved to snuggle up, all of us either on a bed in the girls room or a bed in the boys room...listening to these tales. Then the scurry back to bed (probably before the witch got us)....but ...

I worked last Sunday, which happened to be father's day. It was interesting...I wondered if there would be anyone at all coming into the library. And it wasn't busy, only a few hundred people came through in those hours we were open, but it is so great to see how many fathers are coming in to the library with their children. More fathers are also coming with their children to activities such as Tinies Time, Storytime and school holiday programs. I love to see anyone sitting with a child and helping them choose a book, and on father's day it was great to see so many dad's getting involved. Working in a library I'm passionate about books. No apologies, that's the way it is. Combine that with working with children and you have a woman doubly passionate about children discovering the wonders of books and eventually reading. I could go and on about the benefits of reading out loud to your baby, about showing your toddler the way to hold a book, about spending t...