“Matt is impossible today,” his teacher said when she wearily passed him off to me. I could only see a 4-year-old whose large, frightened eyes were wet with tears. He looked lost and lonely and I immediately found myself wanting to shelter him. I was a 23-year-old kid myself, barely paying rent on a rundown railroad in Bushwick. This was the first real job I had landed, yet I was only a novice, an uncertified preschool librarian in Brownsville.
Back in November I attended the Brooklyn Public Library’s annual fund raising gala and talked to the library’s benefactors and patrons about how potential budget cuts might adversely effect the library’s operations.
I hadn’t heard anything about it until yesterday, when a friend told me that he tried to go to the library on a recent Sunday and found it closed. I emailed library’s spokesperson to confirm, that yes, the central branch is now closed on Sundays.
“It’s not like libraries are over-funded!” said Soledad O’Brien, master of ceremonies for the 12th annual fundraising gala for the Brooklyn Public Library on Thursday. “It’s not like, ‘Trim the fat off those libraries!’ Those are cuts that are going to be very much felt.”
