How The NYPL Saved My Family

I can pretty safely say that the New York Public Library is the reason we bring both sons home from vacation.

Old school, I know, but when possible, we’ll drive to our vacation destinations rather than fly. With two children within slapping distance of each other for hours on end—neither with electronics—it can get uglier than two tomcats sharing a fence. (Usually they’re pretty good at the conversation thing, but 1,000 miles is a long time to chat.)

Enter the library.

Before a trip to Disney World a couple of years back, when the boys were in third grade and kindergarten, I borrowed audio books from the library. Several times when I was driving, the back seat was so quiet I thought the kids had drifted off. Instead, they were rapt. The biggest success was Rick Riordan’s Lost Hero.

Not only did audio books keep them engaged through four big Red states, the CD bundles elicited discussions on plots, characters and Greek mythology. At one rest stop, Andy motioned toward one girl and asked if I though she looked like Piper—one of the book’s three main characters he’d been envisioning. Without the library and audio books, there’s a good chance the loudest child would’ve been dropped off somewhere near the Cherokee reservation to have been reared by new-found relatives.

The trick is getting books the whole car will enjoy and can discuss. A recent unscientific survey of four suggests that 100 miles of Diary of a Wimpy Kid goes a lot farther for the front seat than it does for the back, especially if it’s a perennial bedtime read.

But even books with limited appeal can do their trick, assuming they appeal to the driver rather than the driven.

For the drive to fetch Andy from the grandparents in North Carolina one summer, I’d picked up Warhorse, a few volumes of The Magic Tree House and some other audio books. Usually game for any story, CJ quickly tired of the boy and his horse and began to lobby for two kids and their twirling tree house. When that didn’t work and with no one to aggravate, he fell asleep.

One last tip–make sure you keep track of all that you borrow. In addition to papered sports anthologies, Flat Stanley, and a Greek myth or two we’ve managed to sprinkle up and down the Eastern Seaboard, there are a couple of audiobooks floating out there. Still, despite the reimbursement to the library, we’re better off financially (and otherwise) than had we bought—or never read—the books we’ve borrowed.

Hillary Chura is a reporter and New York Family’s Le$$er Parenting blogger. Follow her on Twitter @hillarychura for money-saving tips on NYC parenting.