Nonfiction in Focus

3/2/10 A few dozen nonfiction children's books, given away

The fact that I'm going to be changing jobs in a few months brought me to the sudden realization that I need to step-up the downsizing initiative at work. Today, over lunch, I did a quick culling of my nonfiction children's books. While getting rid of books is always difficult, I'm now such a proponent of libraries that I increasingly feel like my own collection can be quite small. I quickly pulled several dozen books off the shelf that I could live without.

I teach a graduate course every other Monday to educators in our district, and we hold the classes right at my school. Recently, we've been having our sessions in the first-grade classroom of my colleague Stephen, who is fresh out of college and working hard to teach a roomful of seven year-olds all they need to know to be successful in life.

During our last class session I asked Stephen to grab a nonfiction book out of his library so I could demonstrate something and came to the shocking realization that his book collection was seriously lacking in the nonfiction category.

Steve is working his tail off at school and, in a perfect world, would have been presented with a high-quality classroom library the day he stepped into the building. Since that certainly didn't happen, he's be trying to piece together his own collection of books from whatever sources he can find.

I was all too happy to lend a hand. Steve enthusiastically accepted the box of books, but they are, of course, just small drops in the bucket.

Anybody out there, Dear Readers, want to donate another $1,000 worth of books to the guy? I'll be happy to broker the deal.