Room for Debate: "Just Right" Books and Libraries

The New York Times has a series called "Room for Debate" which invites a variety of "experts" in a given field to present brief opinion pieces on given topics.  This week, two of the debate topics are book related.

Thursday's topic was "What's Are 'Just Right' for the Young Reader?" and today's is "Do We Still Need Libraries?"  The answers seem pretty obvious to me!  Haha.  Let young people read what they want to read, and when they seek guidance, offer it based on their interests, not yours.  There is a book for every reader and when a mismatch occurs, the reader will likely stop reading or skim the parts that are too mature, too complicated, etc.  And on the topic of whether we need libraries? Yup. Sure do. Especially children and older adults, who use libraries and library programming extensively and depend on that access.  Plus, it's so cheap (less than $50 per person) to run a library.  It would be foolish to get rid of them.

Anyway, enough of my editorializing.  Go read the debate!

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