Raising Readers: Make a Library in Your Home

I have always wanted a library in my own home. I set my sights high at age eight when I watched Beauty and the Beast for the first time. That library! Walls of books, so high you needed a ladder to reach them, and balconies and a cozy fireplace. Sign me up.

But wealthy princes-turned-beasts are not in abundance, and as time went on, my library ideals also changed. I still wanted a space reserved for books, but I realized I'd rather have something cozy and comfortable instead of elaborate and spacious.

When we moved into our home last year, we didn't know what to do with one of the little rooms in the basement. It didn't have a closet, so we didn't plan on using it as a bedroom. For a couple of months, it was the playroom, but the toys always migrated to the family room. One day I had the brilliant idea to turn it into the library. True, it wasn't the perfect room for it, but I was determined to make it as perfect as possible.

Even though Mike wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about the project as I was, he was a good sport and willingly did all the little jobs I gave him. The room is an odd shape because it jogs out a couple of feet on one side, so one of the first things Mike did was to make that little section into a bench seat (it opens up for additional storage). We hired someone to make the cushion for it, and then, because every library needs a nook, we hung curtains so a little reader could close himself in.

The room took us forever to finish, but I'm very happy with the result. Who knew this little basement room could be so cute? I think having a room dedicated entirely to books sends a strong message to my kids that our family loves and treasures reading. Books are some of our most prized possessions, and because of that, we want them to be accessible and located in a place that's pleasant to be in. This room isn't the only room we read in, nor the only one with books in it, but it's a guaranteed, cozy spot, perfect for reading, any time of the day.

Your home might not have the perfect place for a library either. But I would encourage you to be creative and figure out if there's a little corner that can be turned into your own little library.

 

Details:
Tall bookcase: IKEA (but we got it from a friend who was getting rid of it)
Little Tikes table and chairs: yard sale
Turntable bookshelf: yard sale
Red chair: given to us by a friend
Blue, green, and white pillow: made by me
Peter Pan print: Litographs
Hanging light: IKEA (this particular color is not on their website)
Small, black frames: IKEA (we took out the mirrors and replaced them with prints)
Children's book prints: starting in the top left and going clockwise: All the World (free from a cereal box), Make Way for Ducklings (thrift store), Blizzard (unbound copy from publisher), Harry the Dirty Dog (thrift store) 
White bookcases: garage sale
Window curtains: made by me
Window valence: made by Mike
Bench seat: made by Mike
Bench seat cushion: fabric purchased at Jo-Ann
Body pillow: Smiths
Knitted pillow: made by me
Wall lamp: IKEA
Long curtain panels: Target
Area rug: Target (similar)
Book timeline: made by me (more info here) 

I would love to hear about your cozy reading spaces and/or how you make your books accessible for every family member. Please share in the comments (or send me an email: sunlitpages [at] gmail [dot] com).

Raising Readers: Create a Book Timeline to Preserve the Memories

When I was little, I kept a spiral bound notebook to record what books I'd read and when I'd read them (the Goodreads of yesterday). To this day, I still love to look through those pages, see my haphazard 8-year-old printing, and remember those early days of reading.

I've been reading chapter books to my kids for three and a half years now. That's a lot of books. And although I've kept diligent track of those books on Goodreads, I wanted something my kids could see--a large-scale spiral bound notebook, if you will.

So I created a book timeline.

I first got the idea for a book timeline from Everyday Reading. Quite awhile ago, Janssen put up a bookworm on their playroom wall. On each circle, she wrote the title of a book she and her oldest daughter had read together. I loved this idea of visually capturing all those books.

In our home, we have a small room in the basement that we've turned into a library. I decided to use one of the walls to visually track all of the chapter books the boys and I have read together.

Because space was limited, I scaled down Janssen's model. Each circle is 2-inches in diameter and tells the title of the book, the author who wrote it, and the month and year we read it in. Then I mounted each circle onto one that is 2 1/2 inches. I also decided to make it into a timeline, rather than a bookworm.

This sounds like such a simple project, right? And it is. Don't be afraid to make one for yourself. But it took me forever to finish (and I still don't know that I'm 100-percent happy with it, but that could just be because of the space I'm working with and not because of the timeline itself).

For one thing, I decided to laminate all the circles. This was maybe a little overkill, but I didn't know if this was something I'd want to keep for years and years and years, so I decided to make it as durable as possible.

Then there was the problem of how to display them. My original idea was to have them go around the entire perimeter of the room, but the ceilings are so low (since it's a basement), and so I would have run into a tall bookcase and a window, and it just wouldn't have worked. Then I thought maybe I could make them into a garland of sorts and string it back and forth across the ceiling. That might have been cool, but it would not have been very timeline-y, which was what I wanted.

Finally, I settled on the one available wall in the room. I put up the circles in rows and stood back to admire my work . . . and there was still something missing. That's when I decided to add a header at the top (I agonized over this for several weeks but finally, for lack of thinking up anything better, went with the rather cliché, "Lost in a Good Book") as well as years placed between the circles. Both of these additions made it look less like a jumble of circles and more like an actual timeline.

I can tell you, we've already enjoyed this display immensely. Aaron and Maxwell love reminiscing over old favorites, but it's also made us realize that some books fade much more quickly than others. There are some titles they can't remember at all, but hopefully, this wall will help remedy that.

It's also just kind of fun to see the sheer number of books we've read over the last three years: fifty-three at last count. That's a lot of happy hours spent reading.

I was also really happy to recently add Redwall with the little asterisked note, "Read by Dad." I hope there are many more asterisks in the future. (Related post: Give Dad a Turn)

Stay tuned: In next month's Raising Readers post, I'll reveal the entire library (all 40 square feet of it). (But I'm wishing I could move it out of the basement for just an hour to photograph it.)

I'd love to hear about how YOU preserve your book memories: do you keep a reading journal, use Goodreads, or have an Excel document? Or do you have something more visual like this that you and your kids can enjoy and remember with together?