Madam Librarian

My eldest daughter likes to look at books, but I don’t think to read them to her nearly as often as I wish I did.  I’ve been wanting a way to make books more accessible—well, they’re plenty accessible, as they’re on bookshelves within reach, but I wanted them to be more prominent so I would think to read to my children during the day.  I know.  I’m a bad mother.

One of my friends introduced me to the idea of rain gutter bookshelves.  They’re made of…wait for it…rain gutters.  The vinyl ones, of course—not aluminum.  They actually work out great—they’re lightweight, durable, and the mounting brackets can be purchased right off the rack and necessitate no modification.

So following this tutorial, I did a little update to our reading nook (read: hallway).

We still have all of the room that the bookshelf gives us, but I now have a wall of “featured books” (or books that land there).  If I were fancy, I could make a point to put seasonally-appropriate books out when a holiday approached.  I’m not; I assume the books will naturally rotate themselves with some assistance from my fourteen-month-old and her book-flinging skills.

And I am so pleased with the results!  Both kinds of results—I think they actually look great (and hubby, who kindly went along with the project but doubted that they would look nice, actually gave me/them a compliment!), and the girls have looked at many books today.  The Little Miss actually sat and let me read a book to her.  We put it back, then she went and got it back off the shelf and we read it again.  Twice.  I realized with some guilt that I read to her approximately never, and hope that it’s not too late to start—I hope that I haven’t failed her already!  Her sister could turn the pages of a book by seven or eight months; I realized today that the Little Miss is capable but hasn’t ever had the chance (some of that is because her older sister is always around, too).

Since the books are so bright and inviting, I haven’t had a problem (yet?) with the Little Miss grabbing the shelves and trying to use them as a ladder.  I’m not ruling out that she might, but I am optimistic.