New Books Help Children Learn How To Use The Library

Posted on March 24, 1998

During her course of research for a new nationwide library literacy book, titled A Treasure Hunt in My Library, author Candace Jackson, founder of Museum Educational Foundation, discovered that many educated adults and friends felt totally inadequate taking their children to the library. They were uncomfortable using the library computer let alone using the Internet access computer. Jackson says, "I gave my books to friends to test and found that the parents learned as much as their children did during the testing."

Jackson says that because of rapidly changing technology, most schools have not been able to keep up with and teach modern library fundamentals due to limited resources and funds. Moreover many parents don't have today's necessary library skills to teach their children. As a direct result, our children suffer from 'library skill-set inadequacies.'

Jackson added, "My own son is a perfect example, he failed to pass the library literacy part of his reading proficiency test and almost failed to graduate from high school."

Jackson states that there is a lack of books and resources available to teach children how to use the typical library computer, the Dewey Decimal Classification System and the Internet Access Computer. Consequently she has developed her current library literacy series that address these needs.

In her book, A Treasure Hunt in My Library, Jackson introduces two critters that take children on treasure hunts. Dewee Decimal is a caterpillar that thinks he's a bookworm and Libby O'Congress is his sidekick pre-teen freckled face butterfly. Jackson also has three age specific, supplemental treasure hunts, in one book designed for children K-7 to complete as a treasure hunt in their local public libraries.

The books will be released during National Library Week, April 18-25.