Book 500 was Return of the Library Dragon by Carmen Agra Deedy ... in which the librarian at a school is retiring, and a well-meaning I.T. guy comes along to clear out every. single. book. and replace them all with tablets, white boards, and other computer apparatus.
The librarian is - oh look - a DRAGON who insists, along with the students, that the books be returned. Technology is nice and can be included in the library, but ... BOOKS! Books are nice to hold, and smell, and get downloaded straight to our brains, and can't be deleted (unless you lose one). Books are wonderful!
On the final page of the book, with the new non-I.T. librarian installed, there's an illustration of her desk with a sign that says, "Technology Free Tuesday - unplug it or lose it." Much to my (secret) delight, Sunny looked at that, paused, and then wrote on our kitchen calendar, "Tech Free Tuesday." I've been trying to get an electronics-free day built into our week for a LONG TIME but haven't been able to get anyone (including Dad) on board at all ... this book may have done it for me! I've not said anything but inside I'm doing a little Dance of Joy. ALL HAIL BOOKS!!!
*****
Background: When Sunny and Posy were about ages 3 and 2, I got bored with reading the same books over and over. I wondered how long it would take to read one hundred different books ... but even then, that seemed a little wimpy. We were reading all the time. So I went for a thousand. I maintained the list in an Excel sheet because it could catch the repeats for me - none allowed! It took us a year and 4 months to read 1000 different books - mostly picture books, with a couple of chapter books toward the end. Book 1 was The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen and book 1000 was Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss.
This time, well, this is actually my second attempt at a 1000 Book Challenge with our younger three. The first one never really got off the ground, so in January 2015, I started over. It's taking us a long time because somehow most of my list got deleted in the second month (so is this our third try?), and because we've had A LOT of repeats, which don't count! Magnolia wouldn't read anything but Elephant and Piggie for quite awhile last spring. We've been moving forward at a better pace in the past few months, and I think we can get it done this summer ... so about a year and a half. This time, we started with Fancy Nancy and (what else?) Elephant and Piggie, and I may save Oh the Places You'll Go for Book 1000 again. And this time when we get to the end, we're going to have a party.
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