Lillian Crook, Bismarck

It is National Library Week 2025. This year’s theme is a celebration of the 67th anniversary of the first American Library Association’s National Library Week in 1958, dubbed “Wake Up and Read.” You can learn more about it at the ALA’s National Library Week website.

I am a retired librarian. I grew up in a house filled with books and newspapers, with all four generations reading these books and newspapers. I never knew a day in my life when there was no reading material in our homes and tents and outhouses and campers. My mother was a reader, and she gave all of her children books to read (many of which were hers from her childhood in Slope County, ND). Later she read books with grandchildren and great-grandchildren (and took those kids to a whole bunch of used book sales).

When we were living in Okinawa, some of the books that were shipped to us were books from our Slope County grandparents, including “Fun with Dick and Jane” (my copy of which I still have). My older siblings were in school in Okinawa, so my brother and I had mother to ourselves some days. Mother handed four-year-old me that already battered copy of “Fun with Dick and Jane” at the kitchen table in that home far away, and lo and behold, before I started kindergarten in Okinawa I could read.

In her long life, she visited countless museums and historical sites and National Parks, with her parents and aunts, and then with her children and grandchildren. That little girl (me) grew up to graduate as a valedictorian, earn a B.S. in English and Library Science, and then a Masters degree in Library Science (MLS). Thus, it is that I became what I describe myself as “an educator,” and during my career I belonged to the American Library Association, other national and regional library associations, and the ND Library Association (I was for one year in the 1990s the President of the ND Library Association). Because of this, I have a lot of librarian friends, all around the country. I even have a niece who earned her MLS and is a public librarian.

National Library Week, April 6-12, 2025, is a celebration highlighting the valuable role libraries, librarians, and library workers play in transforming lives and strengthening our communities. The core values I learned from my library science professors included the Right to Read as well as studies of book banning over centuries of history.

Never did I imagine that this right to read would be under attack in the 21st century from our own elected representatives. I’m shocked to the core of the recent news reports that the funding for libraries and museums in the U.S. has been slashed. And I know for certain that my ancestors would be horrified. Aren’t you? Next time you see a reader you know, wish them happy National Library Week.