Dismissal: 3:10

It is 3:15 PM at the Palisades Public Library, and the second floor has turned into a veritable romper room. You can spot first-timers because they are looking around for the librarian, trusting that at any moment she will silence the ruckus with one terrifying ssshhhhhhhhh!

But in this Reading Room, the shhhh!never comes. Neither does the librarian. She is downstairs, stoically guarding the main entrance. When future readers of America approach her glass door, she wards them off with scowls and sass (a preventative measure that, incidentally, also allows her to stay sedentary for hours on end).

Upstairs, children and doting adults are left to wander through the curiously copious collection of books– really, the shelves are swelling with books. Bright-spined meticulously alphabetized books. Full-color, national geographic, original edition, lithographed books—right there for the taking!

And taking they are! Children are gleefully reading! They are huddled in threes giggling at prose!

The only sign that anything’s amiss is the table of Polo-ed private school boys who glare at the public malaise with a mix of envy and doubt.

Reading is not FUN, they seem to say.

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