Boston Library Crawl

AND WE’RE FINISHED! The Parker Hill library in Mission Hill reopened about a month ago, after being closed for a year of renovations, so it was our last to check off in our year of visiting every branch of the BPL.

Travel notes: Parker Hill is about 4.5 miles from home, a blessedly simple bus trip via #22 or #23. Even with our constraint of being back home for nap by 10, it was easy peasy. The Mission Hill area is not really familiar to me, but it proved aptly named, as we found the library by walking uphill toward the giant church.

Teresa’s rating: Apt. It seemed fitting to wrap up our adventures at a lovely little platonic ideal of a library. The 1931 building is tiny and charming, as is the collection, and the very friendly librarians chatted with Reese (and were very understanding when she didn’t use her library voice).

Reese’s rating: 11/10. I RAN! Not the most toys, but the puzzle and activity box kept Mama busy. (We were confused to find the board books mostly shelved away from the toddler area, but that just resulted in Reese somehow coming home with three books instead of one. Strong Elephant and Piggie collection, and lots of new-looking toddler books.)

Teresa’s book: The Secret Place. I’ve been meaning to read some Tana French, and where better to jump in than the fifth book in a series? (I may have been somewhat distracted while picking my own book.)

Reese’s book: Goodnight Train, by June Sobel. I love the whimsical illustrations in this sleepiest of books. Who doesn’t love sleeping on a train, especially one with a bathtub car and an alligator handing out toothbrushes? (Once again, yes, I have checked out a book that my own company publishes. Look for the sequel in September!)

Nearby attractions: We walked around the mission itself (Our Lady of Perpetual Help) and through Mission Hill Playground, then admired a mural on the Tobin school, all within steps of the library.

The Roslindale branch marks our final library-that-was-open-when-we-started-visiting-libraries to visit! (One newly reopened library to go.) It also marks our first library visit fail—given the complicated constraints of the library opening at 9 and needing to be home by around 10 for nap, it took two tries on two weekends to check this one off.

Travel notes: The Roslindale library is about 5 miles from home, with most routes requiring a two-bus trip with a transfer at Forest Hills (i.e., where transit dreams go to die). Nothing about the rest of this story is interesting, so please skip ahead to the next section.

On our first attempt, I planned to take the #21 to Forest Hills and walk the second leg (about a mile and a half, partially through the Arnold Arboretum), then reverse that to get home. When, mid-trip, I discovered that the #21 only runs every 45 minutes on weekends, the prospect of one timed to get us home for nap seemed unlikely. No problem, we could take the orange line to Ruggles and catch the reasonably frequent #22 or #23 home! Except when we got to Forest Hills, we saw that the orange line was running BUS SHUTTLES part of the way. Bus + subway + bus offered zero prospect of getting home before toddler self-destruction, so we abandoned plans of the library, played in the Arboretum for twenty minutes, and then took the #21 back home.

The second weekend, the orange line was still running bus shuttles, so we had to work on a very precise timetable. We took the #21 to Forest Hills an hour before the library opened, giving us plenty of time to walk the mile and half, play in the arboretum, check out the large Roslindale Farmer’s Market setting up in Adams Park, and be standing outside the library at 8:55am. We then left the library at 9:12am to catch the bus back to Forest Hills (planned for the #34, actually took the #51), and took the #21 back, arriving home promptly at 10am.

If you’re counting, that’s five bus trips for a ten-minute library visit.

Teresa’s rating: Precipitous. It doesn’t seem very fair to rate a library that I only spent ten minutes inside, but I love the quirky 1961 building (semi-circular, domed, mosaic tile trim). The flowers and monster-painted utility box and lolling golden retrievers outside, looking over the park and farmer’s market, were just right for a summer Saturday.

Reese’s rating: 12/10. Limited board book selection, but a lovely front-and-center toddler area, with a rocking giraffe (!) and foam blocks. TBH somewhat afraid of the human-sized stuffed frog in the window.

Teresa’s book: Property, a collection of stories by Lionel Shriver. I have been feeling transgressive lately, and Lionel Shriver is my go-to for “just how terrible can one be?” I’ve only read her novels previously, and I suspect her strain of social commentary might be more palatable at short story length.

Reese’s book: Snap! Snap! Guess the Animal! This book has no author or illustrator credited, but it has interactivity (lift-the-flaps) and animal sounds, which are two big winners at our house right now.

Nearby attractions: Two trips meant we got two romps in the Arnold Arboretum (the Blackwell footpath through Bussey Brook Meadow was excellent for toddling); photo is from the first weekend, which was sunnier. Today we also passed by Roslindale Wetlands Urban Wild Park, strolled through Roslindale Village, and checked out the farmer’s market.

My college friends Lark and David (and children Josephine and Sidney) are in Boston from the summer, living in Jamaica Plain, so OF COURSE I proposed a playdate at one of our few remaining BPL branches.

Travel notes: The Connolly branch is in JP, about 4 miles from home. Reese and I took the #22 bus to Jackson Square and then walked about half a mile on a gorgeous Saturday morning. (Our very cool friends rolled up on bicycles; I inspected their baby-carrying technology. Reese enjoyed knocking on Sidney’s helmet.)

Teresa’s rating: Charming. The BPL says this lovely 1932 branch is “Jacobean-style limestone,” or, what we call at our house “Bank of Library.” The inside is old wood and sunny windows and a cozy children’s room. We only happened to discover the tiny garden in the back, where Reese sat on a stump surrounded by wildflowers (OK, possibly weeds) to eat some breakfast like a wood elf, because we arrived before opening.

Reese’s rating: 14/10. A giant basket of stuffed animals! Puzzle pieces to put everywhere! But let’s be honest, the best part was getting to hold the restroom key.

Teresa’s book: Lark picked All Aunt Hagar’s Children, a short story collection, for me, with a strong recommendation for all the work of the (Pulitzer-Prize-winning) author, Edward P. Jones. (Intriguingly, the stories are said to all be linked to those of the author’s first collection: “The fourteen stories of All Aunt Hagar's Children revisit not merely the city of Washington but the fourteen stories of Lost in the City. Each new story—and many of them, in their completeness, feel like fully realized little novels—is connected in the same sequence, as if umbilically, to the corresponding story in the first book.”)

Reese’s book: This is how motherhood has lowered my literary standards: I picked this book for Reese without reading a single word of the text. But Peek-a-Boo What? has both die-cuts and lift-the-flaps, and let’s be honest, Reese is in a phase where she turns pages faster than you can read anyway. Late-for-nap baby got a good noncranky ten minutes of reading out of this on the bus home, so #parentingwin!

A sunny Saturday morning made for a satisfying trip to one of the downtown libraries. We were a little rushed at the library itself (it opened at 9 and I wanted to leave by 9:30 to be home for nap), but then Reese fell asleep in the carrier anyway (which she rarely does these days) on the walk back to the subway.

Travel notes: The South End branch is about 4.5 miles from home. We took the subway to Broadway and then walked a pleasant mile over the Fort Point Channel and through the South End. Reese currently enjoys pointing at dogs and yelling “DA!” and, man, the South End has A LOT of dogs out on Saturday morning.

Teresa’s rating: Cozy. The children’s room had a nicely contained baby/toddler octagon, with built-in board book storage and wooden puzzles. There were a lot of board books I wasn’t familiar with (and sometimes I feel like I have seen EVERY board book). The adult area seemed smaller and less easily browsable, though that might just be the impatient toddler talking.

Reese’s rating: 12/10. Chairs and benches to climb! Rocking horses to tow! This toddler is getting a bit tougher to contain.

Teresa’s book: Medium Raw, by Anthony Bourdain. This recent NYT “Best of Bourdain” roundup/appreciation made me want to dip in.

Reese’s books: We have Pat the Bunny, and Reese’s very most favorite page of all is the one with the hole, where you stick your finger through Mummy’s ring. So I picked The Good Morning Game, by Hervé Tullet, where EVERY PAGE has holes for you to stick your finger through. The premise is that “Finger Worm” (um, ewww?) is getting up and getting ready for school. In a show of preternatural good taste, however, Reese so far has zero interest in sticking her finger in any of the holes in this book.

Nearby attractions: We met our baby friend Lilly, who lives nearby, at the really lovely Ringgold Park for an early playdate. (Matching up two one-year-olds’ nap schedules with the library’s Saturday hours proved alas too difficult.) Reese and I shared an avocado toast (because South End) from the South End Buttery by the baby swings.

Several folks advised us to wait on visiting the East Boston library during the winter, so we wouldn’t miss the enormous park and playground. Our friend Sira invited us to meet her there on what turned out to be a gorgeous early summer day, so, success! It might just be the weather talking, but I left convinced that East Boston is the most undiscovered/underrated section of the city.

Travel notes: The East Boston library is 8 or 9 miles from home (it’s a little hard to figure accurately when the walking directions include a ferry). We took the new silver line SL3 route from South Station, and then the blue line + walk + red line back.

Teresa’s rating: Charming. The sunny, new (2013), cheery open space is an oasis anchoring a giant park. On a summery Saturday, the library and playgrounds were hopping.

Reese’s rating: 15/10. Buckets of board books! A toy soup of puzzle pieces and crayons! There wasn’t much I could do to add to the entropy, but I tried.

Teresa’s book: Sira gave me Marcus Off Duty, by Marcus Samuelsson. My cookbook club recently cooked from Samuelsson’s The Soul of a New Cuisine (African), so I’m looking forward to trying this more multi-ethnic (“Ethiopian, Swedish, Mexican, Caribbean, Italian, and Southern soul”) home-cooking book.

Reese’s book: Jane Foster’s Animal Sounds has beautiful art and animal sounds both standard and atypical (“kwak kwak” says the penguin!). We read it probably four(?) times on the way home. (Reese doesn’t really believe in linear reading yet, so some pages we saw a dozen times while skipping others entirely.)

Sira’s book: We sent Sira home with the very unusual cookbook Scraps, Wilt & Weeds, hoping she will report back on the overripe-banana-and-coffee-grounds cake, among other potential reuses of undesirable kitchen bits.

Nearby attractions: The gorgeous Bremen Street Community Park, right behind the Airport T station, has the library at one end, the YMCA at the other, and playgrounds, a splash fountain, a community garden, and tons of open space in between. After Reese enjoyed the playground, we walked to Helados Juli’s Frozen Dessert for mind-boggling Latin American confections of shave ice, ice cream, fresh fruit, tamarind paste, and sweetened condensed milk. I have never seen anything like it, and Reese has never been so sticky.

Reese is transitioning to a one-nap schedule and also to a strong preference toward napping at home rather than on the go, which, yay for predictable naptimes. But needing to be home from 10:30 to noon makes visiting libraries that are open from 9 to 2 seem a bit logistically hairy. So we went for a nearby one today while we work that out.

Travel notes: Uphams Corner was our last Dorchester library (of the six!) to visit. It is 2.3 miles from home, though not particularly straightforward by public transportation, so we ran there and back with the jog stroller.

Teresa’s rating: Venerable. I came with no particular expectations for this library, which I knew was slated to be replaced soon, especially once I saw it shared a building with several other community services. The adult area was small (though well-cared-for), but through the exit door, down an industrial staircase (it was urbex-y!), and we came to the children’s room, which is all vintage dark wood shelves in a FORMER SWIMMING POOL. It was so cool! (On further reading, I learned that this smallest BPL library has been here since 1904, making it the longest-standing BPL location, save for the Central library. I’m pretty sad to know it’s moving on.) 

Reese’s rating: 15/10. Great toddler toys (puzzles, puppets, blocks) and a wide selection of new-looking board books (many unfamiliar to us, which doesn’t happen often; toddler lit may by definition be an exercise in repetition).

Teresa’s book: The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami. This Murakami novella grabbed me with its unusual package (weird vertical flaps). I can’t say I fully understand what it is yet (see: impatient toddler; approaching naptime), but I picked it up to show to some Murakami-aficionado friends.  

Reese’s books: LMNO Peas by Keith Baker seems to be an alphabet book about occupations? Except all the characters are peas? (Also, I later learned that this book is part of The Peas Series, which includes LMNO Pea-quel.) Train!, by Judi Abbot, is a story about a single-minded toddler (in literature as in life ...). Spoiler alert, I feel like the tunnel is sort of a deus ex machina, but the book includes fun-to-read choruses like “Train-plane-car! Train-plane-car! Digger-digger-digger-digger! Train-plane-car!”

Nearby attractions: Dorchester North Burying Ground is Dorchester’s oldest landmark (est. 1633) and one of Boston’s six seventeenth-century cemeteries.

Yup, this is a library with a punctuation-themed mosaic set in the sidewalk out front. I KNOW.

Travel notes: The North End library is about six miles from home. We took the red line to Park and walked, though Haymarket is a bit closer. (The red line was sort of a mess because of bus shuttles between Park and Kendall, which shouldn’t have affected our trip at all, but tell that to a screaming baby sitting at Ashmont for an extra ten minutes with the doors closed.)

Teresa’s rating: Continental. This charming, vintage (1965) library is “modeled on a Roman villa,” with a sunny indoor “courtyard,” a bas-relief of Dante, and brickwork and dark wood. It felt a bit like an old-school North End cafe.

Reese’s rating: 14/10. Nice selection of board books, and the beanbags and magnetic alphabet easel in the sectioned-off young kids’ area were a hit. Cannot recommend the alligator puppet.

Teresa’s book: Spark Joy, by Marie Kondo. I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It did not change my life (exhibit A: my house), and I agree with a lot of the criticism about the classist nature of minimalism. But I liked that in this book she admits that throwing away her screwdriver because it didn’t “spark joy” was a mistake, and also, my reading has not been going that well lately and this book is short and has pictures.

Reese’s books: I’d never really seen Reese react to something with fear, and this library had a bin full of puppets, including one of an alligator, so now I can say that I definitely have. Reese was NOT ABOUT the alligator puppet. Because I am more curious than I am a loving mother, I may have spent some time testing the boundaries of that rather than immediately putting the puppet away. So in commemoration of that and of Reese’s recent measles and mumps vaccine, we got The Lady with the Alligator Purse, and also Miss Mary Mack, by the same author and illustrator.

The Brighton branch was our second stop on our libraries-of-Brighton tour, and probably the gawkier, less charming cousin. It was hopping on a late Saturday afternoon, beautiful weather notwithstanding.

Travel notes: The Brighton library is about 7.5 miles from home, but we walked the one mile from the Faneuil branch, and then walked another mile into Brookline to take the green line home.

Teresa’s rating: Studious. There were so many people reading or studying at this library, and they were all being INCREDIBLY QUIET. The adult areas were so silent that I was glad Reese was asleep while I explored them. Sort of like 2001: A Space Odyssey, this library is a 1960s/70s vision of the future, with sleekly renovated ramp-connected levels and unusual sound design.

Reese’s rating: 11/10. Kind of a snoozer at first. Reese woke up in the children’s area, which had a good selection of board books, attractively arrayed at baby height.

Teresa’s book: I picked up a couple ambitious (for different reasons) choices (African History: A Very Short Introduction and The Way We Garden Now), but I put them back* in favor of the new middle-grade novel Supergifted by Gordon Korman. I’m not sure if Gordon Korman is a name people know, but I had a mild obsession after HE CAME TO MY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL as part of our Book Parade reading program. I remember his books (I Want to Go Home! and This Can’t Be Happening at MacDonald Hall) as being exceptionally smart and hilarious, so I am eager to check in again some twenty-five years farther into his career.

* I did not actually put them back. I brought eight books home from this trip.

Reese’s books: Cars Galore by Peter Stein and Big Little by Leslie Patricelli. My only disappointment about these two is that the conclusion (spoiler alert!) of Cars Galore is “someday you’ll drive!” and I’m really committed to self-driving cars being a reality before Reese is sixteen.