West Boca Branch Library Essay Contest |
"What a Library Card Means to Me" |
Elementary School Winner - Alison B. - Sunrise Park Elementary
Middle School Winner - Zachary T. - Eagles Landing Middle School
High School Winner - Samantha B. - West Boca Raton High School
Click the student name to go to their essay. |
Alison B. – Elementary School Category Winner – Sunrise Park Elementary
 What a library card means to me is: magic! I think of a library card as a key. A key to open a world full of possibilities. A world full of information, dreams, facts, fantasy, adventure, history, or whatever you pull off the shelf. A library is a sacred place and owning a library card is a great privilege. A library card grants you access to all of these worlds.
A library card is marvelous because no matter what skin color, age, gender, or heritage, you can have a library card. A library is a special place where anybody can use their key to open a world to keep as their own for a little while.
With a library card, when you check out a book you can think of the other people who have read the book before you. You can wonder what the readers thought as they read the part you are reading now. A library card enables you to share something beautiful and meaningful with others. A library card allows you to go on a journey. You can go on a fantasy journey, like I did with my favorite books, the “Twilight” series, the “Harry Potter series,” and “Eragon.” Other books put you in the narrator’s place, using the big, fat word if. They make you think, “What if that was me?” I use that word if a lot when I read books like “The Diary of Anne Frank.” You can plunge into that world of danger. You can dive into that world where risks make things happen and where you can feel the character’s adrenaline, except it’s running through your body. You can close your eyes and see something different than the endless line of cherry wood shelves in a library. Something always tells you that you’re not all alone. You can dare to do anything. When you read a book, you’re not just reading. You can become a person other than yourself. Instead of just being a regular girl, going to a regular school, and living a regular life, I am someone else. I devour a book and I want to be a witch, a vampire, a dragon rider, and party of a rebellious “so-called wizard army.” I long to be that person, who something special happens to. But then I remember something special is happening. I have my library card. Now anything is possible. I still want to be there, though. I close my eyes, concentrate and relax. I believe. I look within my heart and let it soar. I let my soul rest in a place that is not it’s own. Suddenly, I am tumbling through pitch-black darkness. I am not in Kansas anymore. I mean, Florida!
What a good book can do is that it can suck you in. I use a library as an escape. So many other people use it as an escape too. You get sucked into the book, and you can forget everything that’s troubling you. It washes away and your mind is focused only on the book. My mind is only pinpointing the joy of reading a wonderful book. What a good book can do is it can make you think about everything you read. What a fantastic book can do is shape the way you think and feel. A fantastic book moves you to emotions. A library card enables you access to the simple pleasure in life of reading. A library card is so complex, because when you check out books, you are moved and you go into that other world. Absolute magic! At the same time, library cards are so simple and pure. Anyone can have one, and everyone has their lives touched and affected by books.
I am a proud owner of a library card. A library card contains magic that will never run out but never will be wasted. I will continue to use my library card magic throughout my whole life.
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Zachary T. – Middle School Winner – Eagles Landing Middle School
 A library card, to me, means one single, misunderstood, soft-spoken word. Life. What I mean by life is that it has been stitched and fused with part of my past, present, and future. You could trace its history and find that, throughout my life, a library card has always been a part of it. Oh, what memories have jumped into my mind.
When I was little, at the point of my toddler years, my mother took me to the library. When I walked inside, I already knew that this place was a place of many wonders. Walking in, all I saw was books, books, and books. They seemed to encircle me. Everywhere my eager eyes looked, a book sat upon a shelf, longing for someone to open it up and turn its cessile pages, wistfully hoping someone would expand their mind by drinking the print contained only by the imagination. We walked over to the children’s section. There I first learned the true power of a library card. That small piece of plastic allowed me to pick books that would become part of my being, my soul, my life. As my hands, shaking with excitement with every movement, began to pull the books off the shelves like my life depended on it. I would open each one in my lap and have my mom read each word to me as I gobbled them up, my hunger for words hand begun. Each word she spoke was savored in my brain as one would savor food in their mouth. So delicious, I couldn’t stop. The ones we could not read were checked out so I could dine on every word possible. This is when my library card began to intertwine itself into my soul. What lay ahead of me in life with my library card was unimaginable, even to one with imagination almost unfathomable.
Then came grade school. Those were times when mostly I wanted to devour the genre of nonfiction. I would check them out using my library card over-excessively as the week was progressing. And then, the “Reading Counts!” contest began. It was spoken that if you had 250 points you would spend half the school day at Wilt Chamberlain’s. I visited the library very frequently. I would go there almost every day. I would just sit in the library for hours and just read books one after another, my arms and eyes were like clockwork, robotic almost. And all the ones unfinished, words just trying to break out of the book. I would check them out and ruffle their pages at my house or other places that I went. I won the contest … not once. Still, the books from the library made me feel wonderful inside. They ended that in 5th grade. That was the year of a breakthrough as well. Through those K-4 years, all I would read were nonfictional books and some fantasy. In fifth grade my cocoon broke. I read that year four “Harry Potter’s,” the “Gregor” series parts 1, 2, 3, “Inkheart” and “Inkspell,” “Eragon and “Eldest,” “Where the Red Fern Grows,” “Flush,” “The Lightning Thief,” “The Amulet of Samarkand,” 1-7 in the “Narnia” books, “Montmorency,” “Stoneheart,” “The Last Book in the Universe” and countless others. The words from them tasted like fine food from a five-star restaurant.
In middle school my card and the library did not play the biggest part. Last year I bought most of my words from stores because I needed, not wanted, needed the new books. I still did visit the library. I was a VolunTeen and also would check a book if I was shelving and saw a fine feast. I had also done the lock-in. It was wonderful to be in a place filled with some of the best literature written in mankind all night.
Now I lay here waiting for my library card to finish my tale. My future lay awaiting. What it holds can only be found in one’s very actions. As well in books. But, receiving knowledge that some people seek for the satisfaction of your hunger lies only in the very weaving of your bond to your library card, to your library, to books, and then to such vast amounts of words. Really even with the end of this story, my life with that library card still continues.
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Samantha B. – High School Winner – West Boca Raton HS
 What comes to your mind when you hear the words Library Card? I ask you. Well, what I think of is the UNLIMITED amount of books I can read and research information that I need for school. Since I read at a very fast pace, I can’t afford to buy all the books that I read, so having a library card is a plus!
I am very lucky because I have the best of two worlds. The public library AND my school library! Mrs. Siegel is an AWESOME Media Specialist! Don’t tell anyone, but she offers me books to read before they go on the shelf!
The best and most exciting thing about the library is that there are brand new books that I can check out that are still on the top ten best-sellers list. Having a library card is a big responsibility. It means that you are going to RESPECT all books you check out. Being careful not to tear the pages as you turn them is important so that the next person will feel like ‘they are the first’ to check the book out.
You must be conscious of when the book is due. You don’t want to keep it too long or others will not be able to enjoy it. Plus when you return the book you can check out another one to read. A lot of the time I check out the paperback books because they have series of books that I am interested in.
I still remember when I was six-years-old and my mom took me to get my very first library card. I was so excited and proud to have my own card. I didn’t need my mom to check them out anymore. Did you know that with your library card you have an ‘online account;’ you can check to see when your books are due and if you need to renew you can do it online?
Today, ten years later, I have my driver’s license and access to a car whenever I need it. If I can’t find a book at WBRHS library, I take a drive to our public library to check out books! To this day I still use my library card to check out books, and I LOVE IT!
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Posted: 02/13/09 |
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