Libraries Without Librarians

A Library Without a Librarian

A library without a librarian is like
A beehive without bees
A tree without leaves
A brownie without chocolate
A forest without trees
A head without a brain
A book without words
An ocean without water
A bird without wings
A zebra without stripes
A tailor without clothes
A barber without scissors
Blood without iron
A bank without money
A fish without gills
A turtle without a shell
All these things are bad, but a
library without a librarian is worse.

Written by members of the Rescue Our Librarians Club (4th- and 5th-graders at La Escuela Fratney, Milwaukee, WI)

I love this poem, which was posted by 5th-grade teacher Bob Peterson on his Rethinking Schools blog. The poem is part of his “A Librarian in Every School, Books in Every Home: A Modest Proposal” posting, a reaction to the news that his school librarian is being laid-off due to budget cuts.

Working with his students, Peterson calculated that it would cost the federal government $7,125,000,000 to pay the annual salary of a full-time librarian for every school in the country—the same as what’s spent in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars every 25 days.

For more information on Peterson’s campaign to retain school librarians, see Rethinking Schools.