From Jeannette Tulis, Green Door Children’s Heritage Library, Soddy Daisy, Tennessee.

My love affair with libraries began early. I was the youngest library card holder in Elmhurst, IL. I think the librarians had pity on me as I checked out stacks of books and so they relaxed the age restriction for qualifying for a card. I read voraciously all through my childhood but not with discernment. I read while swinging on the swings, eating at the table and under the covers with a flashlight when I was supposed to be asleep. 

Fast forward to the time when I had my own children and was eagerly collecting books for them. When my children were just toddlers, I became acquainted with several women in the homeschooling community who had quite extensive home libraries. I was using Five in a Row for my oldest child’s kindergarten year and finding it rather difficult to find All The Books. “What a great Idea”, I thought, “to have so many books at your own house that you would not have to rely on the library!” So I started going to library sales, used homeschool curriculum sales thrift stores, and used book stores. I went to seminars and collected booklists and started to educate myself on which were the worthy books. I kept a little address book in my purse with lists of worthy authors. My collection took some leaps forward when I bought an entire school library; I sold some of them but kept the bulk of them. I have to give props to my husband who looked at an empty space on the wall, over the door frames, high or low and said, “I think I can put a shelf there!” To this day, he has never uttered the words, “I think we have too many books!” So I have kept collecting. Every time one of our four children moved out of our house to go to college or live on their own, I added more bookcases and turned their bedroom into a library annex. 

The big jump was one day when I read about a new listing of lending libraries. I knew I had a good library. Jan Bloom, the guru of home librarians and children’s book collector and seller extraordinaire told me I had one of the best libraries she had ever seen. I decided I would take the plunge, came up with a name and the Green Door Children’s Heritage Library was born. (We had just recently painted our front doors a lovely shade of green!)

I often consider myself the stepchild of the living libraries. I do not have my books catalogued by any system, I do not cover my books, or label them, I do not even know how many I have. My collections are all higgledy-piggledy in that when I have too many books for the shelf they are on, I move them all to another shelf in another room. I find myself dreaming about how I can rearrange various collections to make room for more books. I utilize closets for special collections. I moved all my more esthetically pleasing collections to my formal living room where the bookcases match – they do not match anywhere else! My collection is especially rich in WWII resistance stories as my Dutch parents survived the Nazi occupation just before they were married and then emigrated. I also have an outsized collection of art books for children as my daughter is an artist and I am an art historian wanna-be. I am a self-taught naturalist and so have a pretty wonderful collection of books on the natural world. I offer a kindergarten enrichment program and so have a ridiculous number of picture books on every topic imaginable. 

My check out system is about as low tech as it gets. I just have patrons fill out a ruled index card with one book per line listing the title, author, and if it is a hardcover or a paperback. The patrons take a picture of all the cards so they have a record of what they checked out. I keep the cards in an index card box with the date added. I make sure every book is stamped with my name and address before it leaves my house, I make a count of the books checked out and make sure this matches the number on the index cards. 

I do not charge anything for my library thanks to a grant that a friend obtained to reimburse homeschool moms for the services they provide to new homeschoolers. It has been determined that my library provides a wonderful service to the entire homeschool community and so I invoice the grant for the time I spend helping families find books in my library. This allows me to buy more books! My patrons can keep the books as long as they need them. I do sometimes send friendly messages asking them if they are ready to return books they have borrowed. I often bring stacks of books to church to meet a special request of friends who attend there. 

There is nothing more rewarding than having children come over with their moms and tell me my house is the most beautiful one they have ever seen because of the books! I love living in a library and am always surrounded by so many book friends. I have books in nearly every room of my house except the kitchen and the formal dining room. 

New families hear about my library and come to visit. Visits are by appointment only. I love playing matchmaker with children and books. They tell me the last three books they loved, and their favorite topics and I curate a stack for them. I very much appreciate being a living books librarian and learning from other librarians about books I do not have but want! I have developed the reputation in the Chattanooga homeschool community as the book whisperer, the book enabler, the phone-a-friend when you come across a book you think is worthy. I embrace all of it and plan to keep lending books as long as I can. One day I tell myself, I will retire and just sit and read all the books in my library that I have not yet read!

This article is part of our Librarian Notices series of library stories at The Card Catalog. You can connect with us to comment on this story or any of our other library stories on our Facebook page. Listen to more about Jeannette’s library and her library journey in this podcast episode from Plumfield Moms. You can also listen to Jeannette and other library ladies share a variety of beloved book here.