A Day in the Book Fridge

Today was Rosh Hashanah (L'Shanah Tovah to all), which meant that the Cambridge Public Schools were closed for a day's holiday. It's okay to have a day's holiday two days after the start of the new school year, but I was feeling slightly aggrieved by the allocation of only one day's holiday a year to each religion. The Muslim and Jewish children have really happy holidays to celebrate, but Christianity has been given Good Friday. Good Friday?! Couldn't we at least have claimed Christmas, for God's sake? It won't be long, I am sure, before Hallmark develop a line of cards wishing friends and relatives a 'Happy Good Friday'. Perhaps they'll be adorned with brightly colored graphics of a smiling Christ strolling through the streets of Jerusalem with a cross perched lightly on his back....

Anyhow, now is not my time to reconcile my irritation: this blog is about Iola's day out in Boston, otherwise known as how to spend a day in a book fridge.

At 8.30 this morning (and it is important, here in America, not to say half-past eight as no-one knows what you mean), Iola and me joined the other sardines on the red line into Boston. At the first Boston stop, we leapt out of our subway carriage and collected one of Iola's best friends.
'Let's go to the library,' I said.
'I don't want to go to the library,' A replied.
'It's a nice library,' I said in my most coaxing of voices despite being already aggrieved by Cambridge Public School's religious policy.
'I want to stay at home with my cat.'
It's a nice cat - all fluffy and black; I would have quite liked to have stayed at home with my coffee.
'We could find books about cats,' I said wheedingly, wishing I had poured a second cup of that coffee before facing a truculent seven-year old.
'I don't like libraries,' said A. 'They're lame.'

It's probably perfectly reasonable to not like libraries when you are seven years old. The books that you are able to read by yourself are always much shinier in the book shop, they smell nicer and all the book shops in Cambridge let you eat cake while you are looking at them. Libraries have a lot to compete against - shabby books that another child has already read, a fierce librarian telling you to keep the noise down, a complete absence of anything eatable (unless you are a toddler who might gnaw discretely at the edges of each page). So, how to convince a 7 year old that a library would be good? How to rescue Rosh Hashanah before A dissolved into tears and A's mother had to take the  morning off work so that we could sit on her sofa all day with the cat?
'It's not really a library,' I said.
A looked at me with profound suspicion. 'Really?'
I looked at Iola and Iola smiled back at me before turning to A: 'It's a book fridge.'
'A book fridge?' It never fails to amaze me how much suspicion a seven year old can carry in their voice.
'Yes,' me and Iola vigorously nodded. 'With Harry Potter,' added Iola.
'Books about Harry Potter?' asked A.
'Ooooh no,' Iola said with an even bigger smile, 'With rooms out of Harry Potter.'
We were on our way.

Entering the Boston Athenaeum is breath-taking: there are long galleried rooms of books, there are high vaulted ceilings, there are huge arched windows looking out onto the graveyards which litter the center of Boston (it might seem unusual to an outside that this city centers around graveyards rather than financial institutions, but the costumed guides which hurry tourists through America's early history probably generate as much wealth here as banks and insurance companies put together. We'll leave the skyscraping corporate buildings to Houston, TX and London, England; in Boston we have dead bodies). Entering the Boston Athenaeum is particularly breath-taking when you are part of a cobbled together mission of Harry-Potter-meets-Spy-Kids-while-travelling-in-time.

Looking for clues

Harry Potter on the rooftops

Books

Moving bookshelves

Creeping unnoticed with stealth and silence

I would like to offer my most humble apologies to any readers we disturbed while shuffling silently on our bellies along the glass floors above the reading rooms; I can give the greatest assurances that no books were harmed while we searched the pages of early volumes for clues to our mission; and I would like to stress that only a couple of fingers were squashed as we moved the book shelves using the amazing cog system. I would also like to offer my thanks to the janitor who turned a blind eye to our game and the librarians who were willing to play along.

And the outcome? Iola was utterly happy and fell asleep before 6.30 pm (not half-past six, remember); the children had an insight into book preservation, demonstrated that they were able to be absolutely silent; we had a fascinating discussion over which books the girls would like to have preserved for their own grandchildren; and, at the end of the outing, A begged me to take her to the library next time we go. Libraries aren't lame anymore apparently, they're cool ('of course,' Iola retorted, 'They're book fridges.')