Books on Shelves

About once a week, I volunteer at my son’s school library, so I get to see what the elementary crowd is reading.

The popular non-fiction books center around jokes, dogs and how to draw cartoon characters. The popular fiction authors include Rick Riordan, Dan Gutman, J.K. Rowling and Roald Dahl.

Part of my job is to shelve books. I have a huge appreciation for the Dewey Decimal System. But the easiest books to shelve are the ones that are part of a series. I don’t have to read tiny numbers and letters on the book spines to find each of their spots. Some of the series take up a whole row in the stacks so they are easy to find.

I used to shelve a lot of Mary Pope Osborne’s Tree House books, Gertrude Chandler Warner’s Boxcar Children stories and Cam Jansen mysteries.

Now my son is older. He and his friends read a lot of books about Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, Erin Hunter’s Warrior Cats and Trenton Lee Stewart’s Mysterious Benedict Society.

I’m in awe of these authors, coming up with well-written stories that become classics and children’s favorites. The authors not only write one success, they write many.

Ever since I opened my first Nancy Drew detective book, I’ve wanted to write a series of novels that people would enjoy and that library volunteers and staff all over the world would have to shelve according to the Dewey Decimal System.

 But I’ve found that reading the books with my son is much easier than writing them. Writing is hard work.

--cawk