I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy

At the school I go to, once you are in 8th grade and have good enough grades, you have the opportunity to have one of your electives inside a little kid's classroom (we are a K-8 school, so some of them are REALLY little). I'm a TA (teacher assistant) in a 4th-grade classroom, and I love it. A few days ago, one of the kids came up to me and said, "Here's a gift." It was an adorable little picture book. I read it and gave it back to him. Granted, it was a cute book, but my family had literally just filtered out picture books because they were taking up too much space. He tells me that he wants me to take it as a gift and I should keep it, knowing fully well that I don't really need this book. I say okay and start walking towards their classroom communal bookshelf, when he yells, "Wait, I think I wanna keep it!" I say okay, and then and only then, he remembers that he has a tiny little brother at home that would love a picture book. I felt bad for not taking the picture book, but also not too bad because I knew it would be put to good use. Therefore, I promised him to blog about this book sometime this week. Here we go!

I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy is about how everyone is accepted in a library. Mychal Threets was the author of this book and even leaves a two-page note at the end explaining how he fell in love with libraries and wanted to share his love with the world. The illustrations by Lorraine Nam are just as beautiful as the message itself. The photo at the bottom shows just how detailed all of the illustrations are. This is a sample I pulled from the book, and everything appears to be very intentional. It really drives the message that "... the library is a place where you'll always belong" (Threets 5). You'll notice how there are people of all different races, disabilities, and even species! This book is made up entirely of vibrant colors to appeal to young kids' eyes. Ultimately, the point of this book was to indicate this: no matter who you are or where you come from you, can fall in love with the library. And in my opinion, if you can fall in love with a library, you can almost certainly fall in love with books!

I'm so happy that I have started blogging again. I know I said every Wednesday, so today was just an extra blog for my TA student. I'm (genuinely) so happy you're here. Thank you for reading! I hope to see you soon!

This photo was found on the Amazon preview of I'm So Happy You're Here: A Library Celebration.