I was mobbed today at storytime. Besides an already rather full roster of kids, two more were in town visiting their grandmother, so she thought to fill their morning by bringing them to the library. The older child was happy with the plan, but the little boy was decidedly not; luckily, he calmed down when he saw that going in for a story had the added benefit of gaining him a stamp on his hand. Ah, the little joys in life.

The teenagers were quite atrocious in the afternoon. Some sort of health project had them all excited, and they were crowded around all the tables in groups of five or six, gluing toothbrushes and plastic fruits to pieces of poster board. The problems started occurring when the groups began to heckle one another. First Boss Lady took her turn wandering about the library settling them down; when they began ignoring her, I took over. After a bit, we decided to turn the task over to the reference librarians, and returned to our at least semi-peaceful haven in the children's room.

I had a fun time this afternoon when a child asked me for help tracking down information on "T. Elkins, the guy who invented the refrigerator." I thought it would be simple enough, but after searching through all the kids' books on inventors, then all the adult books, then all the reference books, I grew suspicious. Only one book had even mentioned this guy, and that was in a footnote in an appendix.

"Did your teacher assign you this guy?" I asked.

"No, I picked him."

"Where did you find him?"

"On the internet."

"Mmm-hmm. Well, all the articles on refrigeration seem to be referring to another guy instead. Why don't you just switch to him?" And that, after half an hour of fruitless searching, satisfied her.

"Today we read Harry, the Dirty Dog."

"I know that one!" This is something of a shock to me; Eric recalls very few books from his childhood, especially fiction. "That's the one with the dog who gets so dirty that his family doesn't recognize him. It's sad."

"Well, no...not really sad, dear..."

"It was kind of sad, in the middle, when they didn't know it was him."

Eric is a true sentimental. He cries at books and movies much more easily than almost anybody I know. A single glimpse of the cover of Love You Forever (a gift from his equally sentimental mother) is all it takes to bring tears to his eyes. It embarrasses him a bit to be so sensitive, but I cherish that part of him deeply. Sometimes, though...

"Eric, the dog was doing backflips. How can you be sad while looking at a picture of a dog flipping through the air?"

Okay, so I'm perhaps not at my most sympathetic when I'm tired. Remorse for squashing his sorrow over Harry didn't really kick in until I'd written this down just now. Excuse me; I have to go apologize to my husband.

We were informed that, with the temporary closing of several of the Toledo branch libraries, we would likely be swamped with temporary patrons. This isn't a problem in and of itself, per se; the problems will come when these patrons discover that our collection doesn't contain the serious and esoteric references held by their home library. We were instructed to inform any complaining patrons that we are "a mid-sized, popular collection library." In other words, we aren't about to order your stinking encyclopedia of electrical engineering, fella. To tell you the truth, I'm rather looking forward to the first opportunity to use that line.

Storytimes are going to be affected. I'm not happy with the prospect of some of our regular attendees being left without a spot in any of our session, but there's really not much we can do; I'm sure that the children who will be coming in from other libraries were regular attendees back home, and they deserve to hear the books, too. All we can do is alert the parents to be on their toes for signups, and not to wait until the last minute.