'Can Emily use her lively mind and runaway imagination to help bring a library to Pitchfork?'

27 June 1996 | Memories 

#memoriesfromdiaries 💛

As a routine and a ritual, mornings and evenings [alongside my quota of coffee] were usually reserved for those delightful, joyous library visits.

We had a kutty little band of guys who used to frequent the lone library in town. On this particular day I met two of my friends – Panchaksharam and Joseph in the Library premises. Then, as usual, we all had coffee together. ☕😋

On my last entry of the day - well, if there was any pressing issue that needed urgent attention, I used to impulsively start writing about it, and after having got it neatly typed out, sans errors of any sort, I used to post them for the Readers’ Mail column in ‘The Hindu’.   

Well, you may want to read a related post on an exciting children’s novel titled, Emily’s Runaway Imagination, by Beverly Cleary, published way back, in the year 1961.

Emily is a nine-year old little girl who grows up in a little ‘rural’ town called Pitchfork!

Emily used to write occasional letters to her cousin Muriel. 

Muriel always wrote about the library books she read - books like Heidi and Toby Tyler, which Emily had never even seen.

Aunt Irene, Muriel’s mother, said that Muriel was a regular little bookworm.

Emily did not envy Muriel the fleece-lined bedroom slippers or the cement sidewalk for roller-skating, but she did envy her that library.

She longed to be a bookworm, although she did not think she would care to be called one.

Unfortunately, the town of Pitchfork, Oregon, did not have a library.

Now, can Emily use her lively mind and runaway imagination to help bring a library to Pitchfork?

And that forms the crux of this delightful story, on our past post HERE!