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5 Jan

When we went, we always carried a list of books made out by Granma, and Granpa presented the list to the librarian, and turned in the books that Granma had sent back. She didn’t know the names of modern authors, I don’t suppose, because the list always had the name of Mr. Shakespeare (anything we hadn’t read by him, for she didn’t know the titles). Sometimes this cause Granpa a lot of trouble with the librarian. She would go and pull out different stories by Mr. Shakespeare and read the titles. If Granpa still couldn’t remember by the title, she would have to read a page – sometimes Granpa would tell her to keep reading, and she would read several pages. Sometimes I would recognize the story before Granpa, and I would pull on his pants leg and nod at him that we had read that one, but it got where it was kind of a contest – Granpa trying to say before I recognized it, and then changing his mind, and this got the librarian all confused.

She fretted some at first, and asked Granpa what he wanted with the books if he couldn’t read, and Granpa explained that Granma read us the books. After that she kept her own list of what we had read. She was nice and smiled when we came in the door. Once she gave me a stick of red striped candy which I saved until we were outside. I broke it in two and split it with Granpa. He would only take the little piece, as I didn’t break it exactly even.

Forrest Carter – The education of Little Tree