Booking up 100 years

The children's section of Dunedin's free library service has turned 100, while its book bus has notched up 60 years. Charmian Smith looks at how they are faring in a changing world.

Some of the children are held in rapt attention by the story being told by Su Ikin.

Others are restless, and fidget or crawl about, despite librarian Ikin's best efforts to engage all with action songs and counting rhymes.

It is Wednesday morning at the Dunedin Public Library in Moray Pl, and a good number of preschoolers and caregivers have gathered in the children's section's storypit to be entertained - without recourse to computer graphics.

It is a relaxed environment.

There are no gold stars withheld from those failing to demonstrate sufficient active interest.

Yet, there's potentially plenty at stake here.

The library's storytime encourages pleasure in books and reading and also helps child development, according to Phillipa Crack, youth services librarian at the Dunedin Public Libraries.

If you do not foster children's love of reading when they are young, they are unlikely to pick it up later, and being a competent reader able to comprehend the written word is an essential life skill, she says.

"Reading develops people's imaginations and exposes you to situations you probably never met yourself and makes you think how you would deal with it. It's a wonderful escape and entertainment and it's also educational. It develops concentration, and that's no small thing as it affects all your learning. I think it would be hard to get away from the importance of it, which is why we like getting children when they are very little."

This is less a warning to all those who are yet to get their child a library card, and more a confident assertion of the enduring value of books and their repositories.

The children's section of the city library is a colourful and inviting space, and probably a long way from the small juvenile department that opened on March 12, 1910, a couple of years after a free municipal library was established in Dunedin with funds from American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

It was stocked with titles such as Our Little Dots, Boy's Own Paper, Tom Brown's Schooldays and books donated by various Dunedin benefactors.

The library still stocks the classics - Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland - but since the library started, children's literature has burgeoned, and vast numbers of colourful books stock the shelves, or overflow into basement stacks.

Some of the hottest picks at present are the Rainbow Magic series by Daisy Meadows, about fairies, which are very popular with little girls, the quirky Geronimo Stilton books, about a mouse journalist, the series about 12-year-old secret agent Zac Power, by H. I. Larry, and Louis Sachar's Holes, according to Mrs Crack.

Another favourite, Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series, has been instrumental in getting a lot of little boys to launch themselves as independent readers.

"They have lots of drawings and are funny in a toilet-humour sort of way, and they love it because it's a bit naughty and irreverent - so many little boys cut their teeth on those, the first few books they read on their own."

Some old favourites such as Roald Dahl's books, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Where the Wild Things are are so popular they are rarely on the shelves, which is a good thing as there would not be space if all the copies were all in, Mrs Crack says.

In the past, reading did not have to compete with as many other pastimes and entertainments as it does today, but Mrs Crack and her team of children's librarians are heartened that children are still reading, many of them avidly.

A popular summer reading programme challenges children in the 8-12 age group to read several books over the summer holidays, keep a reading log and perhaps win a prize.

"It's wonderful when you have a child you've helped with a lot of suggestions for reading and they've read all those and come back for more," she said.

"Children make wonderful customers.

They are so open and they are very frank.

The wee children that occasionally throw a tantrum in front of the desk because they don't want to go home - you feel sorry for the parent, but we think `Isn't that lovely'.

Or the ones that run ahead because they are excited to be here."

Beyond families and individual children, the library supports schools with its learning support policy, put in place a few years ago after the national library service closed its doors in Dunedin.

Now early childhood centres and primary schoolteachers can have a class card which entitles them to borrow up to 30 items.

"We've found teachers have taken that up with alacrity because the school library, however good it is, can't meet every need on every subject.

Some of them use it for recreational reading, but mostly to enhance whatever subject they are studying at the time."

Just as adults find the library a warm and comfortable place to spend time during the day, some children wait there after school until their parents pick them up after work.

Most of the regulars tend not to read a lot - they do homework or socialise or use the computers, Mrs Crack says.

"For most of them it's just a place to go. I always feel sad about that because they may always associate libraries with places where you wait and are bored."