bookmobile

Bookmobiles Fall Victim to Budget Cuts

When I saw this headline, I was deeply saddened. And then I was thrown into a fit of nostalgia. I have written before about my early childhood, spent on the high plains of the Colorado open range. We lived several miles outside Peyton, a small town with a General Store, a post office, and a farm machine shop.

Peyton High School, where my mom taught, received weekly visits from the bookmobile. My dad and I would make the pilgrimage so that I could borrow Oscar Otter. I still have a vague memory of seeing the bookmobile parked by the school and being inside with my dad, book in hand. This pilgrimage was undoubtedly seminal in m lifelong obsession with reading.

Nowadays, information and knowledge are readily accessible at a much lower cost, thanks to Al Gore's internet. Still, I have a difficult time imagining how the Kindle will inspire a love of the written word in my children. The demise of the bookmobile is a highly symbolic event in the shift to digital knowledge. Still, because the internet has virtually eliminated the opportunity cost of searching for hard-to-find items, my mom located and purchased a copy of Oscar for my own kids to read. Maybe the world wide web can play a part in fostering my own kids' love for reading after all.

image from Wired.com