Love letters to libraries: Jacqueline Wilson
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Version 0 of 1. Children’s writer Jacqueline Wilson, author of classics including Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather, joins AL Kennedy, Alexander McCall Smith and Chris Riddell today in our Book Week Scotland series in which writers celebrate their favourite library by writing a love letter to it. Wilson chose to celebrate libraries and librarians by writing this letter to Kingston Library, where she has spent countless hours since she was younger than most of the characters in her books. If you also want to share your appreciation for a library, you can do it here. Dear Kingston Library, Well, you and I are old friends! In fact we go back more than sixty years. My Mum asked if I could join the children’s library early (there was a joining age of seven then in those long ago days) because I loved reading so much and I’d read my own handful of children’s books at least five times. I remember your magical children’s section so vividly. I wish it was still in the main part of the library, but the computers have taken over. I can close my eyes and visualise those shelves now. How I enjoyed wandering around, browsing in one corner and then another until I knew all the books from Louisa May Alcott to Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’d take out my selection so happily every visit. I remember the thrill I felt when I discovered a new Mary Poppins book or an unknown Noel Streatfeild family story. I remember your magical children’s section so vividly. I can close my eyes and visualise those shelves now. I was given special permission to join the adult library when I was twelve. I felt so proud! In those days books stayed on the shelves for years, so if I found an author I enjoyed I could read their entire backlist. I remember all those enjoyable Mazo de la Roche titles in a long pink line, and those much harder yellow Ivy Compton Burnetts. I even had a stab at reading Virginia Woolf, loving the beginning of The Waves where the characters are children – but giving up when the story became increasingly baffling. The first thing I did when I was seventeen and went to work in Dundee was to join their beautiful Carnegie library opposite the DC Thompson offices. I went there whenever I felt homesick because the sight and smell of books was always so soothing. I don’t visit you very often nowadays because I’ve gradually acquired my own library of some 20,000 books – but my house is only five minutes away from your warm red building, so I smile at you almost every day. Let us hope you stay a working library for ever! Love, Jacqueline Wilson |