Oh, and I'm also remembering that while novels like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird had been stripped from the library offerings by overzealous parents by that point, what hadn't were the poetry offerings. So I read Whitman and Plath and saved the Salinger for home. But it was my introduction to a lot of really wonderful poetry, since there was so little other on-level literature in the library at that point. I think that this may have been when the librarian took pity on me and gave me her personal copy of Flowers for Algernon, and later introduced me to Foundation, and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Luckily the junior high librarian liked me better than the elementary school one had. My Central American hummingbird report was fabulous. The diorama, however, was not, and I recall being more than a bit chagrined that it apparently didn't meet her standards. All I had at my disposal was yarn, a stapler, and modeling clay, so I'm not sure what she anticipated was going to happen, but whatever. I'm over her judgy-judgment of my nine year old self. Mostly.
