She may not even know to pronounce the word ‘library’, but that hasn’t prevented three-year old Sahana from dragging her mom to a library every possible day. “The word library has not entered her vocabulary yet. But when she wants to go there, she says she wants books,” says her mom.
Children like her, many of whom might not even know how to put a sentence together, now account for the increasing number of members at libraries in the city.
Ever since summer vacation began, there has been a significant increase in the number of children who visit the library, says a staffer at the children’s section of the Anna Centenary library. The children’s section had 799 visitors this Saturday. “On school days, we get about 200-300 children. But now this has gone up to 500-600 on an average,” he added. This constitutes about 40-45 percent of the total visitors to the library.
In fact, some libraries are finding it difficult to keep the crowd of little readers in their children’s section under control.
“There are times when we have to ask the children to leave their reading systems to accommodate their friends. Students often spend their entire day at the library, often bringing lunch and other snacks with them. There is an increase of more than 100 per cent visitors during the summer vacation,”says Prakash Kumar Joshi, assistant librarian at the Connemera Library.
Apart from locals, some of these libraries are, in fact, seeing families from far off places coming for a visit during summer. But the major chunk of young readers are from the age group of 5-10 years.
“The largest share of this readership comes from the 10-15 age group. They seem to the ones most interested in books.”, says Sekaran G, librarian at the T Nagar branch of Easwari Library. While very young children like Sahana have parents reading out stories and picture books, the ones who are a little older rely on pictures to get them through with their reading. Some libraries have put up several additional reading aids targeting the young ones.The Connemara Public Library also has audio versions of stories for young children.
While it is superheroes and Amarchithra Katha that draw many of the young ones to the library, series like the Geronimo Stilton, Enid Blyton stories, Harry Potter and Goosebumps are the other popular attractions. In fact, many children now prefer library to movies and television.
“There are so many books. I want to read them all. I don’t like to sit in front of the TV,” says nine-year-old Subodini Venkitesh, who manages to cajole her grandmother to take her to the library every other day during her summer vacation.
However, there are students who find themselves in the library only because of compulsion by their parents. “While there are students who are really interested in reading, we also find that some children are here only because of pressure from their parents.”, says Priya V, founder of the Banyan Children Library.