Breakfast in Scarborough

My seventieth Toronto Public Library was Elmbrook Park, the most westerly of all the branches. A modern building on the edge of a small neighbourhood park, Elmbrook Park library was blessed with lots of sunlight filling the interior.

The sunniness was especially bright near an arresting picture window behind the checkout desk. The glass was divided into six panes, with each one representing an imaginary world to which books can transport us. As I looked from right to left on the top half of the window, I studied a purple dragon with fire-breath, a castle, and some Egyptian stick-figures milling around a giant tree near a pyramid. Continuing counterclockwise, the lower panel contained a pirate ship, an island studded with palm trees, real library bags hanging from a hook, and some stick cavemen menaced by a pterodactyl and a dinosaur that said “Roarr!”. Sensibly, the prehistoric stick-men stayed in their cave, which was decorated with dynamic hunting scenes.

The entire left half of Elmbrook Park library was devoted to making young readers feel welcome. A comfortable chair supported a cuddly bear in a red flannel bow-tie, a mama hippo with two babies attached to her side, a floppy frog, and a bunny in pink pajamas. A green triceratops had been flung horn-first onto a low table but appeared to be in good spirits. Sitting on top of a shelf was a stuffed felt bean about the size of a large mango, from which sprouted, well, sprouts in light and dark green. A Jack doll was hanging like Tarzan from one of these vine-like sprouts. Near the bean stood a mustachioed giant flanked by two women. I assumed one of the female dolls was Jack’s mother, but I wasn’t sure about the other one. Was she the giant’s wife? A social worker concerned about Jack’s education? I looked around for the cow and some gold coins, but they were gone, possibly bartered or spent in these tough economic times.

Happily, Humber Bay expanded my number of Toronto Public Library visits to sixty-nine. A compact square building, this branch had dark wooden siding on part of the exterior, creating a cabin-like effect. The wood motif was repeated inside the library, most prominently in the sturdy check-out station. There, several librarians were performing their duties in what seemed like a massive oaken puppet theatre, with dark beams over their heads, below their hands, and composing the broad columns that framed the desk. Despite the prevalence of heavy wood and the building’s low ceiling, Humber Bay was by no means claustrophobic, thanks to two walls composed almost entirely of glass.

A small but well-furnished branch, Humber Bay Library offered its patrons books in Russian and Polish in addition to the standard materials. In the children’s section was an Easter book display that included The Easter Bunny that Overslept. And not far from the rabbit with punctuality issues was another display, this one featuring the local winners of a bookmark design contest. I liked the one which had a Christmas tree reading a book about Christmas at the top of the bookmark. Below the tree floated a blue ghost learning about Halloween. Next down was a turkey studying a Thanksgiving text, followed by a heart, a bookish birthday present, an egg, and a literate shamrock. They all looked happy, even the turkey.

Only a handful of readers were at Humber Bay branch on the day of my visit. As I sat at an empty table near the streetside window, I searched for words to sum up the library’s ambiance: simple, manageable, light-filled, wholesome, enclosed, reserved, and classic.

Integrated into a community centre and French-immersion school, Alderwood branch was located half-way down a wide hallway, opposite Alderwood Pool. A huffing fairy-tale wolf could never hope to blow down this huge open rectangle of a library, as its walls were made of giant bricks.

I couldn’t figure out why this branch seemed so familiar until I realized that it projected the same white-brick institutionalism I associate with school libraries. In fact, after I walked around the entire space, I found out that it actually was a school library as well as a Toronto Public Library. In the corner closest to the immersion school was a well-stocked selection of French materials for children. And a “Class in Progress” sign was at the ready for the next school day.

Plenty of French books abounded in the general part of the library, as did Polish and English resources. Upon closer inspection, I reconsidered my “institutional” description. It was probably an overreaction to all those white bricks, for there were many craft creations that warmed the place up: a cardboard Casa Loma replica, a model forest in a box (complete with rock cave), an ant farm with grains standing in for live insects, a zoo with abstract animal shapes, and a chateau with pebbles pasted on the exterior to fine effect. Providing further texture to the scene were two men absorbed in a game of chess, an elderly man sleeping under a life-sized plastic tree, and two fake birds (a blue jay and a cardinal) perched on porcelain branches that in turn rested on top of some bookshelves.

To conclude this post, I’d like to compliment Alderwood Library on its clever hanging rack for ESL kits. These kits come in tough plastic bags with handles that click into place and can be hung from rods. In most libraries, the kits hang all in a row like shirts in a closet, but Alderwood’s rack was designed so that language-learning patrons could easily access the kits from four different angles. Having frequently wrestled with kits so mashed together that they discouraged browsing, I really appreciated this innovation in rack-design.