Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover

My love affair with books started with my mom taking my sister and I to the library each week. At that time the library was fairly small because Peachtree City was a relatively new city. The library was located in the only main building. The library, city hall, the police station and the doctor's office were all in the same building. Our new church even met in the city hall every Sunday. Anyway, we each picked approximately six or seven books a piece and off course I had them all read by the end of the day.

Every week my sister and I got $1.50 a week for allowance. We would ride our bikes first to Hudson's supermarket, pick out a treat (usually either a big dill pickle, some sort of fake squeezable cheeze or a candy bar) and then ride our bikes over the bridge to the library. There we would spend hours in the air conditioned library and read and read.

We could only carry one or two books a piece in my wire basket, so we had to choose wisely.
I think I must have read almost every book in the children's section first, then I moved up to the young adult fiction. I read the books with the attractive covers and then when I felt like there wasn't much left to read, I checked out a book with a worn out cover. There was no book jacket, the cover boards were bumped and rubbed. I don't remember now the title of that first worn out book that I checked out and read, but I was blown away with how wonderful it was!

From then on I realized that the most bumped and beat up books were the best books at the library! "To Kill a Mockingbird" was one of those books. I truly learned the meaning ,"Don't judge a book by it's cover!" Isn't that true in all things in life? Grandparents ? Don't they have the best stories?

I still tend to pull the book off the shelf that is most love-worn. They are the best.

5 comments:

Uno Who said...

Wow Julie, you sound like you're 85 years old. I bet you had to ride those bikes to the library uphill both ways in the snow!

Mandy said...

Somehow we need to make Todd start a blog so we can leave comments about him! He's a mess! You don't sound like you're 85 - what does he know??? I love your passion for reading and I think it's wonderful.

Unknown said...

Thank you sweet Mandy! He's such a yahoo AND he's coming with Les to my house next week. Maybe you can think of a good prank I can play on him.

Uno Who said...

I'll start a blog for ya, here's my first entry

Today..................................I got up.

Uno Who said...

Next entry.

Today I ate some sqeezable cheeze.

I like saying sqeezable cheeze.