Dear Editor,
I picked up a book of poetry at Reston Regional
Library so I would have something to read my granddaughter at bedtime while we
were at the beach last week. I found The Children’s Own Longfellow. It’s illustrated with wonderful old, oil
paintings. When I was reading it to my
granddaughter, I came across a poem my 6th grade teacher in Salt
Lake City required us to memorize. “Under
a spreading chestnut-tree / The village smithy stands; / The smith, a mighty
man is he, / With strong and sinewy hands.”
It was one of three poems we were required to memorize that year.
My teacher, Mr. Boyce, was a WWII veteran and
brought home a French wife. Since he
had had to learn French to talk to his wife, he decided we should, too. Every morning, all year, we conjugated French
verbs. He really loved poetry. “One ship sails East, / And another West, / By
the self-same winds that blow,/ 'Tis the set of the sails / And not the gales,
/ That tells the way we go.”
Why is poetry important for children? For one thing, it adds complexity of language
they cannot get from contemporary spoken language. It exposes them to an expanded
vocabulary. Poetry is also at the nexus
of cognitive experience and the creation of thought. It is where we go when we want to think new
thoughts, to describe new experiences, to explore, playfully, how language
works.
Poetry is also the only link we have to a
pre-literate past from before we began to transmit our culture with the written
word. The Bible, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Iliad
and the Odyssey were all memorized and recited before they were finally put
down on paper generations after they were first spoken. Those rhythmic cadences are what we have left
from our earliest experiences as human beings.
Chanting and rhyming repetition is how children learn
and remember language.
Who doesn’t
remember, “By the shores of Gitche Gumme, / By the shining Big-Sea-Water, / Stood
the wigwam of Nokomis, / Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.”
I found Susan Jeffers’ illustrated Hiawatha at Reston Regional in with the
other children’s poetry. Much of that
collection has been culled, sold away, or burned. Now that my granddaughter knows from reading this
edition of Longfellow that there are many more poems in the original Hiawatha, she wants to hear them all. Luckily, I have a copy of the entire epic
poem.
But this little book, the one we read at bedtime
last week, I worry about. When I take it
back to the library will some wet-behind-the ears library page pull it for
disposal because it’s old? Inside the
book it says it was published in 1908. Library
Director Sam Clay is having library pages pull old books. Under the Beta Plan, a front-line librarian
will not see this book again before it goes to the dumpster. Will the kid know
that this is a recent printing? Will the
kid ever have heard of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? Will there ever be another child who reads
these words from this very book, “Listen my children, and you shall hear / Of
the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”
I cannot bring myself to take it back to the
library. The fate of this one book is
important to me. It should be important
to you. We need Fairfax County to
understand we will not tolerate any more destruction of our library books. Write the Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors. Write the Library Board of
Trustees. Tell them to cancel the Beta
Plan and revisit the Library Strategic Plan which seeks to replace our print
books with eBooks. Do it soon. Every day more books are culled from the
shelves and sent to the dumpster at Chantilly waiting for transport to the
incinerator.
