The Library at Closing Time

• 3 minute read
• Ages 5-10
• Bedtime Stories

The town library closed at six, and the librarian began putting it back together at about half past five.

This was the best part of her day and she had never told anybody.

The order

Everything in that building had a place, and by half past five almost nothing was in it.

There were books on tables. There were books on the arms of chairs and books on the window sills and a small pile on the floor by the picture books where somebody had been sitting cross-legged for an hour.

She went round with a trolley and gathered all of it.

Then she went along the shelves and put every single one back where it belonged, in order, one at a time.

It took about forty minutes and she could have left it for the morning and she never did.

What she could tell

She could tell a great deal from what was left out.

The three books on animals, stacked with the top one open, meant the boy who came on Thursdays had got further with the birds one than he had last week.

The two picture books left facing each other on the small table meant somebody very young had been comparing them, which is a real thing children do and which nobody teaches them.

A history of the town, out on a chair, meant the old man had been in again and had not asked for help, which he never did.

She knew about eleven regular readers this way and had never spoken to most of them properly.

The last shelf

The last thing she did every evening was the picture book corner, which was always the worst.

She sat on the small chair, which was too small for her, and put them back in their box in the order they went, and straightened the mat.

Then she stood up and turned round and looked at the whole room from the far end.

Every book in its place. Every chair pushed in. The whole thing ready, from one end to the other, for people who would not arrive for another fifteen hours.

Locking up

She turned off the lights in sections, back to front, the way she always did, so the last light was the one over the door.

Then that one, and the key in the lock, and out into the street.

And the library stood there in the dark all night with everything exactly where it should be.