Monday, November 20, 2006

These books are not my own

I have two boxes in the Treehouse rec room with forty-two books in them, all bought this month for our local homeschool support group library. I get to babysit them because I catalogue and sticker them and then take them to support group meetings. (Most of the library isn't stored here, just the new books.)

So they're not my own.

And, truth be told, I wouldn't want to own all of them. Our group is (for these parts) fairly large: 130 families from different church denominations, using widely different approaches to school, and with widely different needs. Some of them have special-needs children. Some of them have teenagers, some have babies, some have both. Some of them have been in the group for a long time, and some of them are just starting out. So when we buy books, we try to pick a buffet, something for everybody. I can get very enthusiastic about books I know I will personally never use!

We have a lot of how-to-homeschool books and curriculum guides, and also books for different subject areas like science and English; books on Christian family living, guides to Shakespeare, and Canadian history. Including a stack of videos and a few cassettes, we have over a thousand items in the library.

And now we have forty-two more.

Every month I write a what's-new library column for our group's newsletter. So I'm going to start posting reviews of these books on the Treehouse as well, as I munch my way through this buffet. [Update: the reviews are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.]

P.S. I should add that most of the library fund comes from money raised from our yearly conference.

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