PRINTLibrary locomotion
Bookmobile drives up literacy in Columbia
Courtesy of Daniel Boone Regional Library
April Karlovit (back left) and other staff provide book rental services to kids such as Antonio Ingram (center) and coordinate book talks, visits from storytellers and other literary events.
February 28, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
At about 3:45 p.m., the library starts to move, turning left onto Garth Avenue and heading north. Stocked with around 2,500 books, CDs and DVDs, it rumbles into a small parking space outside a one-level brick building and comes to a sputtering stop.
No, the building isn’t doing its best Transformers impression.
The bookmobile isn’t the only mobile service vehicle on the roads. Check out these other wheeled wonders.
Oscar Mayer Wienermobile
Oh, I wish I drove an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Everyone would be in love with me! Seeing this mobile and its removable bun roof just makes us want to sing.
The Batmobile
When Batman isn’t using his Batwing, Batjet or Batcopter to get around Gotham City, he uses the Batmobile. Not very eco-friendly, but it is jet-powered. Can you really blame the guy?
The Bloodmobile
These movable locations for blood donations are cars with a cause that save lives and dole out free cookies and juice to those who can stand a prick on the arm and spare a pint of blood.
Welcome aboard the Youth Outreach Bookmobile, the smaller of two book buses from the Daniel Boone Regional Library. The other, larger bookmobile benefits communities without book rental services, such as Harrisburg and Hallsville, but this one is for the kids and their parents. It has become a fixture in some low-income Columbia neighborhoods over the past five years, bringing books practically to the doorsteps of youth ages 2 to 18.
Today the renovated 1986 purple-and-white Chevy bus is parked in front of the J.W. “Blind” Boone Center, a gathering place for neighborhood youth on North Providence Road, a half-mile from the library’s location on West Broadway.
When 7-year-old Dayvair Spain steps into the bookmobile and grabs a book from his backpack, driver April Karlovit greets him by name. “He’s one of our regulars,” Karlovit says. “He’s even beginning to request certain books for us to bring next time.”
Dayvair is situated between two walls of slanted shelves that keep books in place while the bookmobile is moving. To his left is a camper-like door, which is closed now. In the summer, the door is left open for cross ventilation. To his right is the defining reminder that he is in a bus rather than a building: a tattered leather driver’s seat and a steering wheel.
Although Dayvair is too shy to admit he likes the bookmobile, 10-year-old Qayshanta Blackman chimes in for him in typical big-sister fashion. “Oh, he goes there all the time,” she says. Also a bookmobile regular, Qayshanta selects mysteries and adventure books for herself and younger children’s books for her two siblings. “I like to read to my little brothers,” she says.
Qayshanta and Dayvair exemplify those who Outreach staff hopes to reach through the bookmobile. Although the DBRL has had a bookmobile since 1968, it only started reaching out to youth in low-income communities five years ago.
In addition to promoting literacy, the bookmobile offers consistency that might be lacking in some children’s lives. “One thing we’ve found out is that (these kids’) lives are kind of transient,” says Sherry McBride-Brown, DBRL outreach director. “Some may stay with mom one night, auntie the next night and someone else the next night. With us, when we come, they know we are going to keep coming.”
No matter the weather, the bookmobile makes its bi-weekly stops, and 8-year-old Cheris is glad it does. For Cheris, the bookmobile might as well be the ice-cream truck. When Karlovit tells her the bookmobile has Valentine’s Day books, Cheris’ head perks up from her pink winter coat. “You do?” she asks. Minutes later, Cheris steps out of the bus carrying an armful of heart-covered books. She is one of about 16 happy customers that afternoon.
With the kids’ literary needs fulfilled, Karlovit is left with just one more question: How is she going to back the library out of such a tight parking space?
