Support literacy in Middle Georgia at the upcoming Old Book Sale | Opinion

One of central Georgia’s best-loved events is just around the corner.

The Friends of the Library’s Old Book Sale is slated for April 23-26. This annual event is a major fundraiser for the superb Middle Georgia Regional Library system, but its significance is far greater.

The Friends is indeed a marvelous organization, especially for newcomers or anyone wishing to meet wonderful people. When my mother moved here from Maryland to be near her grandchildren, I gifted her a membership, and the library’s Cathy Ivey took her in hand. Soon she was an active member of both the community and the Friends. Today Cathy Ivey’s good deeds are honored by the new branch on Forsyth Road.

Among the thousands of books available at modest prices, I have in years past gone home with treasures ranging from “The Boxcar Children” to a battered 1735 first edition of Jonathan Swift’s collected works. These books — old or new — will take us on fabulous journeys, just as they have taken thousands of our friends and neighbors.

Currently, we see headlines trumpeting such frightening news as “Reading ability of high school seniors worst in 30 years.” Meanwhile, books are emerging in a variety of new forms. What we need to worry about is not the evolution of the book itself but the ability of the succeeding generations to access books in whatever form they may take.

Our libraries are the cornerstone of this country’s dedication to literacy; they are the adhesive that holds together the efforts of the schools and of the parents in the home.

Politicians often talk of providing financial support to students from economically deprived areas. Such programs do not solve our library problem, for in most cases that originates several years before children start school.

In the ideal world, families will read to their unborn child while he or she is still in the womb, with the result after the infants are born, they will yearn for their parents’ voice and begin reading at an early age, making them fertile soil for the teachers that they will soon meet.

When pupils are struggling in elementary grades, the odds that they will become a lifelong reader are steep: not only they but the entire nation will pay a high price.

Today our leaders urge us to “make America great again” yet at the same time the administration is attacking both public schools and our colleges and universities, once the envy of the world. As one who has taught at four colleges or universities, I have watched with alarm as our education system has deteriorated at all levels, even collegiate undergraduates.

While our nation as a whole needs to address this erosion, the persons with the greatest chance of a successful remedy are parents and family members who come in contact with young children long before they enter school. Although children don’t recall much that they are exposed to under the age of three, those years play a significant role in a child’s learning process. When we see grandmothers reading to the one-year-old on her lap, if we close our eyes we can see that child, now grown and roaming the library attacks, electronically or physically.

As a colleague of mine used to say time and time again, “Education is too important to be left to the professionals.” Indeed it is, now more than ever.

The upcoming Old Book Sale is a delightful place one, one that enables all of us to support the cause of literacy.

• Hours: 10 a.m.-7 p.m. April 24, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. April 25, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. April 26. Members only pre-sale will take place 4-7 p.m. April 23.

• Address: Round Building in Carolyn Crayton Park, 130 Willie Smokie Glover Dr.

• Website: www.friendsofthelibrarymacon.com

Larry Fennelly can be contacted at larney_f@hotmail.com