Book Week Scotland: a letter to our local libraries from Floris Books
by Floris Books • 27 November 2014 • Children's Books • 0 Comments
At Floris Books, we love our libraries. We recognise that libraries are at the heart of communities, and we passionately believe in the importance of Scottish school libraries with dedicated and knowledgeable staff. To celebrate Book Week Scotland and the launch of our brand new Scottish Primary School Library Competition, every member of the Floris team has penned a love letter to their local library. We want to show our libraries we care, and to tell them how important they are to us.
Dear McDonald Road Library,
When my first daughter was born, I lived on Leith Walk in Edinburgh and McDonald Road was my local library. The Rhyme Time baby singing sessions held there were a great way to get out of the house, meet other new mums, and brush up on my nursery rhymes!
I <3 McDonald Road because it’s a wonderful public space for local people to come together.
Katy, Publisher
Dear Airdrie Library,
In my not-so-many years, I have visited all sorts of libraries in all sorts of places. But you, Airdrie Library, were the first library I ever set foot in, and to you I owe an everlasting debt.
Thank you for keeping me company before Brownies and Guides, and after swimming and dancing lessons. Thank you for helping me conduct last-minute school research on Victorian Scotland, Arctic tundra and utilitarianism. Thank you for being so understanding when I didn’t return my books on time because I wanted to read them just one more time. Thank you for showing me that the world could be so much bigger than the four walls of the high rise flat which was my first home here in Scotland. But most of all, thank you for helping me realise that books were for EVERYONE. It was a lesson well learned, and the very reason I get to spend every day talking about books for a living!
I don’t see you as often as I’d like now. But my Monklands Council junior library card is still tucked away in my purse and I’ll be back one day soon.
Nuria, Marketing Executive
Dear Hope Street Library,
Growing up in Falkirk I was lucky enough to have the fantastic Hope Street library as my local. It’s one of my favourite places in Falkirk with heaps of brilliant reads, friendly staff and a beautiful building to boot! It was first opened in 1902 by Andrew Carnegie, who put up £6,000 of his own money towards the build, and had a £1.5 million extension in 1993 – Falkirk Bairns certainly love to read! The building is now a really interesting mix of old and new, and is one of the loveliest buildings in the town. I spent time there lost in books as a child, quietly studying as a teen and now find myself getting lost in their books again.
Thanks for being such a brilliant library, Hope Street, lots of love from a Falkirk Bairn!
Clare, Design and Production Assistant
A love letter to a Belfast library
There once was a girl from Belfast,
Whose desire for books couldn’t last.
Her mum’s head was turned,
As her daughter, she gurned;
She needed books to settle her lass!
Her mother, she pondered and mused,
She was left entirely bemused!
Until one day she thought,
Holywood Arches is the spot!
To that library she happily cruised.
Her daughter was as happy as Larry,
She had more books than she could possibly carry!
Her mind was expanded,
And her love was quite candid:
“Library it is you that I want to marry!”
Leah, Design and Production Manager
Dear libraries of my childhood,
Thanks to Bridge of Weir Library for helping me fill my library card (and my school bag) every week and to its librarians for challenging me to read more, wider, better. Thanks for all the help with my homework, back when doing research meant going to the library and filling my jotter with interesting facts about ancient Egypt or the Second World War. (I won a prize for that project, so I guess you get extra special thanks for that!)
Thanks to Gryffe High library for being a refuge, somewhere to hang out when being a teenager wasn’t a picnic. Thanks for letting me check out books one day and return them the next. Unread books didn’t last long in my house – still don’t!
Most of all libraries, thanks for just being you – friendly, and exciting, and quiet (sometimes!). I know you’ve moved on (we both have). You have more computers and I’m all grown up – working with books no less (as if you’re surprised). But I hope you’ll stay essentially you for the next generation of me’s with heavy school bags and two whole pages to write on “a country of your choice”.
Chani, Marketing Manager
Dear Peebles Library,
Our local library is a great place to take my young children, especially on a rainy day. The librarians are welcoming and there are craft activities and bricks to play with as well as books to look at. Most importantly, from my two-year-old’s perspective, we get to go in a lift and press the buttons!
But the long-term enjoyment comes, of course, from the books we borrow, which become my kids’ favourites for the next couple of weeks. We’ve discovered lots of new books, which we wouldn’t have found otherwise, from the great selection available in the library. We also regularly attend Bookbug Rhymetime sessions, which are a great free activity for babies and toddlers, and have encouraged us to sing nursery rhymes and songs together throughout daily life. Thank you Peebles Library!
Sally, Senior Commissioning Editor
Dear Stockbridge Library:
There’s nothing I like more than spending a lazy Saturday ambling down the Water of Leith and popping in to warm up and chill out at Stockbridge Library. Your large wooden doors and tardis-like great high ceiling – its calm consistent lightness – gets me every time. Thank you for the local-village-news feel of the entrance way and the access-to-the-whole-world feel inside. Thank you to the friendly staff who always look so happy to be there that it’s hard to tell who works there and who doesn’t. Thank you for having such a large range for a smaller library, for attracting young and old, and for being cosy enough to encourage us to smile at one another. We could all do with more of that in our lives.
Lois, Editorial Assistant
Dear Dunfermline Carnegie Library,
I was saddened when, earlier this year, I found out you were to close for redevelopment. As a child, I read anything and everything, and knowing that there was a building full of more books than I would ever be able to read excited me more than anything. I still remember fondly the day I got my first library card, sprinting off between the shelves and being completely overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite choice. After gazing around in confusion for a while, I sensibly decided to start with the A’s. You were always a source of wonder for me, dear library, a huge stone building with a black and white tiled floor in the entrance, a comfy green carpet in the children’s room and rows and rows of books, in all shapes, sizes, colours, genres… I loved the feeling of anticipation I got walking through the entrance on a Monday evening after school, clutching the stack of books I had devoured in the previous week, wondering what delights I would discover this week. There are few things in life that give me the same sense of delight as walking through your doors. So, thanks, Dunfermline Carnegie Library, for being there for me as I grew up, a constant presence sitting quietly in the background, waiting for me to return, as I now wait for you.
Kirsten, Marketing Assistant
Dear Porty Library,
In winter, when the wind whips along the Prom, we abandon the swings for your glowing, welcoming, readerly comforts.
A community of children, mixing outside the formality of school. Toddlers moving ponderously from the picture book boxes to the play kitchen and back. Tired parents sitting back holding happy babies. Rowdy kids, unsupervised, bored, full of spark – too full of spark – given a firm dose of humour and reason by staff with talents far beyond their job descriptions. New neighbours discovering local life. Researchers quiet at their screens. Retirees browsing shelves.
We leave weighted down with an enormous bag. Ten books each! Riches beyond our dreams, beyond our earnings, nights and nights and nights of stories.
In the local book industry, we talk about our wonderful, diverse literary ecosystem here in Scotland. Thank you for being the fertile soil that nourishes my new children’s book ideas, and that nourishes my children’s imagination.
Eleanor, Senior Commissioning Editor
Scottish School Library Competition
Floris Books believe in the importance of Scottish school libraries with dedicated and knowledgeable staff. We also believe in filling them with books that have characters, locations and themes Scottish children can identify with, as well as literature from across the world. To support this, we’re launching a competition for Scottish primary school libraries to win £500 worth of Kelpies books. For more details and to enter, please visit www.florisbooks.co.uk/librarycomp.
