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.
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