Reading Tragedy

There is a lovely little used book store by the school I work at. I have tried to always check there when I am looking for treasures. The owner of the store has had health issues for years. He was In a wheelchair because of an accident. The past few years he has been in the hospital and the store has been run by volunteers. Unfortunately, despite having no paid staff, it has been losing money for years. 

I stopped by there the other day with two of my students. We were there to celebrate the fact that they had already read 40 books this year! We we're going to go shopping and buy a book for each of them. We were surprised, when we arrived, to hear that everything was free. The girls walked out with all sorts of books!!

Everything was free because the owner has recently died and they have to close down the store. The man there said it was inevitable.

Today they are cleaning out the store. What does one do with 30,000 or so used books? They tried many different things. In the end, they threw out about 20,000 books.

As we approached we could see books being tossed into the bin. My daughter shouted, "Oh no! Stop!! Mom!! Hurry!"

She climbed up and peeked into the roll away bin. She stod there for a long long time. 

 It. Was. Stunning.

And sad.

We saved all we could. But in the end, tragedy reigned.