Today, my children and I visited the Georgetown library in Grand Cayman. It is a small library, but it will suffice. In Las Vegas our home library is one of the smallest and oldest, but it is 4 times as large as the Georgetown library and with the internet it was very easy to reserve books and have them transferred to our library, reducing travel. The libraries here are in the stone ages; they are still manually stamping each book that is checked out! It was pretty neat to have my children see how things used to be done everywhere.
Joie loves the Magic Tree House Books. She recently finished the 10th or 11th book in the series and is eager to read the rest of them in order, however it may be a little more difficult now that we live here. They had some of the books, but they are scattered between all the libraries on the island. They don't transfer so easily. I am pretty sure you have to go to that particular library and then return it there as well=( Oh well. It's a great lesson for us. It's opening our eyes to just how lucky and blessed American's are! We did find one Magic Tree House book within their internet based catalog search(okay so I exaggerated a bit when I said they were in the stone age) but we never found the actual book. The librarian explained this happens frequently, some books are taken without being checked out, they are filed incorrectly or their system is behind in updating the internet search. We were unsuccessful in finding three books total, one for each of us. Jayden was a bit disappointed that he wasn't getting his spider-man book, but I was happy that I was able to teach him the importance of putting a book from the library back in the correct place. If it's not put back in its place it is very hard to find. He then decided that he was checking out Transformers and Mommy was going to read it to him even though there were no pictures. I'm not a big fan of Transformers and the book is 323 pages long! I was insisting that he should find a book with pictures and much smaller, but his mind was set. So I let him get it, maybe he would really enjoy me reading this book to him and maybe it would spark a love and interest in reading that would last a lifetime. Not only that we could cuddle. But even as we were checking out I was cringing at the thought of reading a 300 paged book that I had no interest in. It was reminding me of books I was forced to read in high school, yuck! It's terrible to be forced to read something you don't really enjoy.
I was able to show Joie a few other options for chapter books like The Box Car Kids and Nancy Drew. She's not interested in Nancy Drew at all and even though I told her that I had read some of The Box Car Kids books she shunned them. Finally, I came across the book, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket. I didn't even know this was a book much less a series. We had seen the movie and found it quite interesting and entertaining. Jim Carey was in it so, however strange and slightly morbid it may have been, it was funny and captured our attention. When I showed the series to Joie she instantly decided that was going to be one book she would check out.
As bedtime approached, Jayden asked me to read Transformers. I only read 1 1/2 pages before he lost interest. I am pretty sure the large words turned him off; he couldn't possible understand much of what I was saying. Maybe tomorrow, he will want to read some more. Either way, if he is enjoying it I will enjoy reading it to him. Thank You Jesus for changing my heart.
We concluded our evening with the first chapter of A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Bad Beginning. It was an easy read and we all are enjoying it.
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