One of my favorite online comic strips is Unshelved, about life in a public library. I met the artist last summer at Comic-Con in San Diego–he was very nice, signed my book with a cute drawing of Dewey, the lead character. He said one of the things he’d learned that weekend was that Unshelved had a larger number of non-librarian readers than he’d realized, which I think is cool. After all, librarians aren’t the only ones who love libraries. 🙂
For the past few months, they’ve been featuring a contest called Pimp My Bookcart, which is exactly how it sounds–pimp your bookcart, send in a picture, and the best wins a brand new bookcart (actually, second best does too!). I’ve been ignoring this contest because, let’s face it, I may love libraries, but I don’t work in one. But today, they posted a link to a pimped bookcart that was featured in the news in Rockford, IL: Decked-out library cart is beyond cool.
Look at that picture! Isn’t that the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?? But more importantly–and this just proves what an enormous sap I really am–is the story of how the welding class at the school turned it into a class project, and worked together to create something so adorable–and functional–for their school library. I love stories like that; they’re the medicine to all the stories of the apathy of today’s kids that are usually more common.