Well, September is a great month for book and library lovers!  The entire month is Library Card Sign Up Month, and today is International Literacy Day!  At the end of the month, we’ve got Banned Book Week coming up (with an extra special surprise!), so all around, September is all about the books.

Library Card Sign Up Month is every September to remind parents, teachers, and students that libraries are an important part of every child’s education.  Plus, I bet that is when the most people sign up for library cards at universities or other academic institutions.

However, the two events going on today coincide in a way that should make all of us feel extremely lucky.  The ALA press release states, “According to UNESCO more than 780 million of the world’s adults (nearly two-thirds of whom are women) do not know how to read or write, and between 94 and 115 million children lack access to education.”

Yet, here we not only have public education, we have these wonderful places where anyone can check out all the material they want- books, movies, audio books and CDs, musical scores, and reference materials.  People can go and use the internet for free, check databases that would normally have a huge subscription fee (paid for by your library), and read all magazines and newspapers they want without paying a dime.  All you have to do is sign up for a library card.

I don’t want to get preachy, but think about all the people who take these great resources for granted while millions of people around the world could really use them.  It’s kind of like what your mom used to tel you, “Eat your vegetables!  There are people starving around the world.”  Except reading Mockingjay is way, way better.