“I just knew I’d find your house would be full of books,” a neighbor said as she eyeballed the bookcases and my pile of reading materials on the coffee table.

I had to smile. I had been in her house and reading matter was everywhere there as well.

“Once a bibliophile, always a bibliophile,” I said. We laughed.

I find it hard to imagine a home and life without books, magazines and papers, but they do exist. How boring and stultifying life would be for me without reading matter!

Over the years, my family had to move many times and to many different places. Each time we moved, one of the first places we sought to find in any new community was the library, our favorite place.

We also bought books and collected them, both new and used. Over the years, our collection grew. It crowded the bookcase and grew to fill another. A feature we liked in this house when we bought it was a large, built-in bookcase.

Even when they were still toddlers, I taught our children to take care of their books, to handle them carefully and not abuse them. Half a century later, the only place their Books of Knowledge show any wear is at the top of the binding where they tipped them out of the bookcase. This is true of all their books, not simply the Book of Knowledge.

I taught my children to treat all books with respect, not to lay them down open and on their page faces. Instead, they used bookmarks to find their places in the books because putting them on their faces could break the book’s spine or back. They would remember the number of the page if a bookmark wasn’t immediately at hand. However, they were never ever to put the book face down or turn the corner of a page down to make a dog ear to mark their place.

They were to open a brand new book a few pages at a time, pressing each opening carefully in order to break the book in gently. When they read, their hands were to be clean so the pages remained dirt and oil free.

When I taught sixth grade, I was shocked at how few students knew anything about book care, the Shasta County Library or even how to use a library. I prepared a unit on book care and use of the library. I took my students on a field trip to the library. After that, my happiness was rewarded when I saw more students making use of the library.