MyKidsLibrary.com - Why MyKidsLibrary? - Comment 1

MKL Editor — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:05:35 -0400

I first conceived of My Kids Library in the early Summer of 2007. While waiting for Story Time to start at the Maynard Library, my kids and I were trying to round up a selection of books to last us for the week. They are both voracious readers, so getting enough books and finding good books was important and quite challenging. My boy, just turned 3, liked baseball, cars, trucks and firemen. My girl, 4 1/2 at the time, liked elephants, dogs, ballet and stories about girls. Managing them both while also making somewhat thoughtful book choices was a large and often frustrating task, and sometimes, I just had to judge the book by its cover and hope for the best.

On this occasion, my daughter found a book about a dog and asked me to check it out. It appeared to be a reasonable selection, so I added it to our pile. After Story Time was over and we had returned home, she asked me to read it to her for bedtime. It didn’t take me too long to realize that this was a book that a parent would read to a child to help them understand and cope with the death of a beloved family pet. She figured it out by the end of the story, and she had some tricky questions for me to answer before she went to sleep.

We don’t have a pet (I’m very allergic), so I didn’t particularly appreciate having to explain to my daughter about death at a time that it wasn’t strictly necessary. I really wished that I’d been able to easily plan ahead to select certain books, that I’d have had access to other parents’ experiences and collective wisdom.

That’s the kernel of My Kids Library.

We couple easy access to the experiences of parents, grand-parents, teachers, librarians — anybody who reads to children — with tools to help us easily remember what we need to check out from the library or buy at the bookstore. And often, isn’t that the hardest part, just remembering? Most of us lead hectic lives that demand all of our energy and attention to stay organized, to remember, to be on-time. My Kids Library tries to help by making it easy to create lists of books, and to access them.

So it has been just about a year since the very first notion came to me, and we are now starting full, public availability of this service. In all likelihood, you are reading this blog because you have signed up and are just starting to explore the site. Thank you. And welcome. Your participation is what will make this site special and useful and a pleasant community for us all. I am eagerly awaiting your feedback. I’d like to know what is good and what is bad and how you think that the site could be improved. Drop me a note at editor@mykidslibrary.com with any ideas or concerns.