Debra J. Knoll - Engaging Babies in the Library: Putting Theory into Practice

The New York Times recently featured a story on the front page with the headline Long Line at the Library? Its Story Time Again. The author, Winnie Hu, reported a 28 percent increase in storytime attendance at New York City public libraries. We learn about library clerks pressed into duty as stroller parking attendants and about parents telling prospective nannies that they expect them to take their children to library storytime. Sari Feldman, president of the American Library Association, is quoted as saying that these enhanced storytimes for very young children are part of a nationwide phenomenon of libraries transforming themselves into learning centers.

Anyone who has been working in or studying public libraries over the past decade or so has to have noticed the sea change in attitudes and services devoted to babies and toddlers. Many libraries have converted public space into places where very young children and their caregivers can find interactive games and educational toys ranging from play kitchens to puzzles and bead stringers. Board books are now standard additions to childrens collections. Storytimes, as noted, have morphed into age-appropriate occasions for early literacy activities of all kinds with waiting lists of children whose caregivers are eager for them to attend. Stimulated and supported by Every Child Ready to Read, the curriculum developed by the Association for Library Service to Children and the Public Library Association, childrens librarians have taken on the role of teaching parents how to be their childrens first teachers and guiding caregivers about how to support those efforts.

Many manuals and guidebooks are now available to help librarians create early childhood play spaces and present enhanced storytimes that facilitate the learning of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. In Engaging Babies in the Library, Debra Knoll adds the missing pieces to those practical handbooks. She provides well-researched tips and advice for dealing with the emotional needs and the often mystifying behavioral manifestations of those needs in babies and toddlers. Many librarians are comfortable in their roles as storytellers but a little less confident about interacting with a crying baby and her anxious mother standing at the reference desk while adults using the computers glare at them. What about the father who doesnt know what restroom he should use with his two-year-old daughter? Or the mother looking for a quiet, private place to nurse her newborn? Or the big brother who is clearly not happy with the arrival of an adorable sibling?

Knoll gives sensible, sensitive advice for all these situations and more. She provides clear time lines for the physical, emotional, intellectual, and social development of young children. Occasional sidebars help to bring developmental issues to life with anecdotes taken from real-life experiences in libraries. For readers who are inspired to implement this more holistic approach to service to these youngest patrons and their caregivers, she provides carefully constructed Baby Steps and Big Steps for each topical area.

All of us who care about children would stand up and cheer if all public libraries could take the Big Steps to ensure that babies and toddlers are served with the commitment and competence Knoll describes here. In fact, we would like to see all children, from birth through adolescence, served by librarians who have the expertise and resources to meet their physical, emotional, intellectual, and social needs. Debra Knoll herself acknowledges that this is a highly challenging goal right now. However, just having the vision articulated by her is a Baby Step toward achieving it.

Virginia A. Walter

UCLA Department of Information Studies

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At first blush, the very idea of combining babies with libraries is somewhat oxymoronicit would seem that they just dont go together. This sentiment is a carryover from the early days, when babies, children, and even teens were not only unwelcome, they were not allowed