©
1981, 1994, 1998, 2001Robert M. (Bob) Leahy
2110
E. Crosby Road
Carrollton,
TX 75006
(972)
416 - 6098
Approximate
Word Count: 2,375
Ambrosia Goes to the Library
for Krys
The heavy dictionary, the one her father kept near the computer, slipped
out of Ambrosia’s hands. It fell to the
floor with a loud thump. It thumped
again when the five-year-old tried to pick the large book up again.
“What’s going on in
here?” asked Ambrosia’s mother, as she came into the den.
The little, blond girl
looked up at her mother, after struggling to get the dictionary to stand
propped against her leg. “I dropped it,
Mommy. It’s too big.”
“It is a big book,” her
mother agreed. “Why did you try and
pick it up?”
“I need it for my
library,” Ambrosia replied. She reached
down and tried to pick the book up one more time. As Ambrosia struggled to lift the dictionary off the floor, her
mother came into the room and reached down and picked it up.
“Show me what you’re
doing,” her mother said.
Ambrosia darted out of
the den and scampered down the hallway to her bedroom. “See?” she asked, standing just inside the
door, pointing across the room to a great pile of books. “I’m making a library. Emily said it was a building of books. And that’s what I made. See?”
Her mother smiled.
“When’s Aunt Jane
coming, Mommy? She’s going to take me
to the library, isn’t she, Mommy?”
“Aunt Jane will be here
soon, Honey,” Ambrosia’s mother replied.
“And we’ll all go to the library after lunch.”
The young girl walked
over to the books and knelt down beside them.
“See,” she asked again. “I made
a building of books: The Cat in the Hat, Horton, One Fish Two Fish, Green
Eggs and Ham….” Ambrosia pointed to
each book as she recited its title. All
of her Dr. Suess books, all of her Barney books, all of her Madeline and
Curious George books were stacked on top of one another. “And I have Emily’s books, too.”
Ambrosia’s mother
wanted to ask if she remembered to ask her older sister if she could borrow her
books, but she didn’t interrupt. She
noted that there were Nancy Drews, Harry Potters, and Little House books piled
to make walls for a large room. Large
and small, thick and thin, red covered and blue covered, paperback and
hardback, every book in the house had been gathered together. Ambrosia had even gathered up the
encyclopedias and the phone books to help build her library.
“Can you bring that big
book over here, Mommy?” Ambrosia asked.
“I want it right here in the middle,” she said, pointing to an empty
spot in the middle of the ring of books.
Her mother set the book
down, and said, “My, you have been busy, haven’t you.”
Ambrosia nodded, then
turned around and picked up one of her dolls.
“Okay,” she said to her doll, “You can go to the library. Did you bring your library card?”
Ambrosia’s mother
watched her play for several minutes, then turned and left the room.
“Where is your library
card?” Ambrosia asked her doll.
“It’s in my purse,” the
youngster answered for her doll.
“You need to give it to
me,” she instructed the doll.”
“Okay,” she replied for
the doll. Ambrosia picked up a small,
pink, plastic purse and opened it. She
pulled out a red, leather wallet.
Inside, in a clear, plastic sleeve, was a white card.
“Are you Ambrosia
Hunter?” she whispered to the doll.
“Yes, I am,” the young
girl said in reply.
“Okay.
You can have some books. Do you
want The Cat in the Hat?”
Just as Ambrosia started to take the book
out of the pile, her mother snapped a picture of her daughter.
“Why did you take my picture, Mommy?”
Ambrosia asked.
“I want to remember the day you built a
library,” she said.
“Here’s your book,” Ambrosia whispered, returning her attention to her doll. “Be sure you take good care of this book and bring it back next week. Emily says you have to bring the book back.” For a moment, the little blond-haired girl was quiet. Then she turned around and looked at her mother. “When is Aunt Jane coming?” Ambrosia asked.
“She will be here for lunch,” her mother
replied. “I’ve already told you a
hundred times.
“Did you want another book?” Ambrosia whispered to her doll.
“Yes,” she answered for it.
Ambrosia’s mother took another picture and
then she left the room.
When Ambrosia’s mother
returned to her daughter’s bedroom about a half an hour later, the little girl
was still playing in her library. All
around the room, dolls and stuffed animals were propped in front of open books.
“Ambrosia,” her mother
said, “look who’s here.”
“Shhh,” Ambrosia said,
putting her finger in front of her lips.
“Emily said you can only whisper in the library.”
“I’m sorry,” her mother
whispered back. “I forgot.”
Before her mother
finished apologizing, Ambrosia stood up and ran across the room and hugged the
dark-haired woman standing next to her mother.
“Aunt Jane,” she said.
“Look. I made a building of
books. It’s just like the library.”
“So I see,” Aunt Jane
replied. She looked at the large ring
of books surrounding the dictionary.
“It looks like every book in the house is in here,” she said.
“Yes,” Ambrosia agreed. “I made a library.” The youngster turned to her mother and
asked, “Can we eat now, Mommy? Then we
can go to the library.”
Ambrosia’s mother
tussled her daughter’s blond hair.
“Yes, we can eat now.” And the
three of them went to the kitchen to eat.
All through lunch,
Ambrosia told her mother and Aunt Jane to hurry. She was so busy hurrying them with their lunches that she ate
little of her own meal: just two bites of her sandwich, three swallows of milk,
and one potato chip.
“Aren’t you going to finish
your sandwich?” her mother asked.
“No, I’m all full,”
Ambrosia replied. She looked at her
mother’s plate and then at her aunt’s.
Both were empty. “Can we go
now?”
“Have you washed your
face and hands?” her mother asked.
“Aw, Mommy,” Ambrosia
asked, “do I have to?”
“Of course,” her mother
replied. “And so do we.”
Ambrosia darted off to
the bathroom to wash up. Her mother and
aunt laughed as she scampered out of the room.
On the way to the
library, Ambrosia sat in the back seat.
She clutched her pink, plastic purse in her hands. Her new library card was inside, in her
little, red-leather wallet. At every
stop sign or traffic signal, she anxiously looked out the window. “Are we there yet?” she would ask.
“No, not yet,” replied
her mother.
Or, “Soon,” replied
Aunt Jane.
When the car came to a
stop in the parking lot of a large, gray building, Ambrosia looked around. “Why are we stopping here, Mommy?”
“We’re at the library,”
her mother said.
“Where is it?” the
youngster asked.
“It’s right in front of
us,” her mother answered, pointing to the gray building.
Ambrosia frowned. “It doesn’t look like a library to me,” she
said. “I don’t see a building of
books.”
“That’s because the
books are inside,” Aunt Jane said
“Inside,” Ambrosia
repeated. She was disappointed.
“Yes,” her mother
replied.
And Ambrosia’s
expression brightened a little as she thought about all the books that would be
inside the big, gray building. She
unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out of the car. She took her mother’s hand and hurried her around to the front of
the building. A long set of stone steps
led up to the doorway. Huge gray
columns towered above the steps.
Ambrosia was too anxious to get inside to notice how many steps there
were or how hard it was for her mother to keep up with her.
“Slow down, Honey,” her
mother said between gulps for air. “I
can’t run up steps the way you do.”
Ambrosia said, “Okay,”
but she only slowed down a little.
Aunt Jane had to help
push the revolving door. It was so big
and so heavy. It was made of large
panes of glass. Inside the revolving
door was a huge, dimly lit room. A wide
staircase was on the left. And across
the room was a large counter. There
were more lights at the counter, where several people stood.
Ambrosia was about to
complain that this library was no building of books as her mother steered her
toward an open doorway just to the right of the counter. Beyond the door, Ambrosia caught a glimpse
of tall shelves of books. The shelves
were taller than she was. They were
taller than her mother. And there were
rows and rows and rows of shelves. All
of them were full of books.
When Ambrosia, her
mother, and Aunt Jane finally entered the brightly lit room where the shelves
and shelves of books were, Ambrosia said, “It really is a building of books.”
She remembered to whisper. She stopped
at the doorway, her mouth dropping open and her eyes growing wide. “I’ve never seen so many books.”
. Ambrosia noticed how
high the ceiling was. She noticed ladders
along some of the stacks of books. She
moved closer to the first shelf of books.
She looked straight up, and all she could see was shelf and shelf of
books. Most of the books looked like
her daddy’s books. They were red or
green with gold or black writing on them.
Some were tall. Others were
small. Many were thick. A few were thin.
“This is the adult
section,” Aunt Jane said. “The
children’s section is on the other side of the building.” Ambrosia followed her mother and Aunt Jane
as they walked down the center of the room.
They walked between row upon row of shelves. Shelf upon Shelf of books.
“How many books are
there?” Ambrosia asked.
“I don’t know,” Aunt
Jane said.
“And you can read all
of them?”
“Anyone you want,”
Ambrosia’s mother replied.
“Did you read all of
them?” Ambrosia asked, her voice rising in wonder.
“No. Not all of them,” Aunt Jane replied. “I would like to read more of them than I
have time for.”
“Me, too,” her mother
said.
“Oh,” Ambrosia
replied. But she didn’t really
understand.
“Today, we’re going to
the part of the library that’s just for you,” Ambrosia’s mother said.
“Yes, there is a big
children’s section here at the library.”
“Oh,” Ambrosia said
again. She didn’t understand that
either.
They continued to walk
past more rows shelves. And Ambrosia
continued to stare at the shelves and shelves of books.
She couldn’t count how
many rows there were. She didn’t know
how many shelves there were. She
couldn’t imagine how many books there were.
“You really could build
a house with these books,” Ambrosia said, at last. “You could.”
After the long walk
across the huge room of books, Ambrosia, her mother, and Aunt Jane reached a
closed door along the back wall. A
large, green dragon, with red and orange eyes smiled down from the poster on
the door. “Welcome,” read the sign
beneath the dragon.
They went through the door and entered
another brightly lit room. But this
room was smaller than the one they left.
And the ceiling was not as high.
And it didn’t have as many rows of books, and the stacks were just a
little taller than Ambrosia.
But it still had a lot
of books. There were more books than
Ambrosia had seen in one place before--at least, more books than she had seen
until today.
Aunt Jane led Ambrosia
and her mother over to a small table.
There were several books scattered across its top.
“Why don’t you sit here
and look through these books for a minute,” Aunt Jane said. “I need to find the librarian and check on
something. I’ll be back in a minute,
and then I will help you find a book to take home.”
“Okay,” Ambrosia
said. Ambrosia walked around the table.
It was painted red. There were four
chairs. One yellow, one green, one
blue, and one orange. Ambrosia picked
the yellow chair. It was just the right
size for her.
In front of her,
Ambrosia saw all sorts of books. There
was a book with pictures of dogs. There
was another with pictures of cats. But
the book that caught Ambrosia’s eye had a large, yellow horse on the cover.
There was a little girl
with yellow curls who rode the horse.
That little girl looked a lot like Ambrosia. Her curls fell to her shoulders.
She looked very small atop the big brown horse with the star on its
face. When the girl stood beside the
horse, she was only as tall as its legs.
Her Daddy had to help her climb up into the saddle.
“Oh,” Ambrosia
said. “I’d like to do that, too.”
“Remember to whisper,”
her mother told her.
Ambrosia took time to
study each picture of the horse. She
studied the little girl, too. She
imagined herself on the horse. What fun
it would be to ride it.
“Ambrosia?” Aunt Jane
said when she returned, carrying an armload of books.
“Oh, Aunt Jane,”
Ambrosia said. “Look at this.”
“Not so loud,” Aunt
Jane said. But she sat down in the
green chair next to Ambrosia and looked at the book with her. “Would you like to take that one home to
read?”
“Can I?”
“Sure,” Aunt Jane
said.
“And I can read it to you. And so can Daddy. Even Emily might read it for you,” her mother said.”
“Do you want to look for something else?”
Aunt Jane asked.
Ambrosia said she was
happy with the book about the little girl and the horse, so the three of them
walked out of the smaller room, back into the big room with the rows and rows
and shelves and shelves of books in it.
They had to walk past all of them again. They stopped at the long counter. Ambrosia was too short to see over the top of it.
“Did you find something
interesting to read?” a woman wearing glasses asked as she peered down over the
edge of the counter.
“Yes,” Ambrosia replied
as she smiled up at the woman. Aunt
Jane handed the woman Ambrosia’s book.
“Do you have a library
card?”
“Oh, yes,” Ambrosia
said. She opened her small, pink,
plastic purse. She reached in and
pulled out the red, leather wallet. She
took the card out of the plastic sleeve and handed it to the woman.
The lady put the card
into a machine. And then she opened the
book about the little girl and the horse and held it up to a machine like at
the grocery store. It beeped for the
book. Then the lady handed the card back to Ambrosia.
Ambrosia returned her card to its plastic
sleeve. She closed the wallet and put
it back in her purse and snapped her purse shut. The woman was holding the book out for Ambrosia when the little
girl looked back up at her. “Thank
you,” Ambrosia said.
“Thank you, Miss Hunter,” the lady
said. “Be sure to bring it back in two
weeks.”
Ambrosia promised she
would.
Then Aunt Jane checked
out all of her books.
“That looks like a lot
of reading,” the woman behind the counter said.
“I was lucky to find so
many of the books I needed here,” Jane told the woman. “So much of what I need is already checked
out at the college.”
“We hear that a lot,”
the woman said, finishing up with Aunt Jane’s stack of books.
As they started to
leave, Ambrosia asked, “Can we really keep them for two weeks?”
“Sure,” her mother
said.
“And then we can come
back?” Ambrosia asked.
“Yes,” her mother
replied.
Ambrosia took one last
look at the big room with the rows and rows of books. She thought about all the big and small books, all the fat ones
and thin ones, and all the tall ones and short ones. “And we can have all of those books?”
“Sure, all of them,”
Aunt Jane said.
Ambrosia sat in the
backseat of the car on the way home and looked through her book. She liked the pictures of the little, blond
girl with the curly hair. She liked the
horse. “I like the library,” Ambrosia
said. “I can’t wait for it to be two
weeks so we can go back again.”
Both Aunt Jane and
Ambrosia’s mother smiled.
The End