The Library After Closing

At seven o'clock, Mrs Iyer the librarian stamped the last book, put on her shawl and locked the big wooden door. Click. The town library was closed for the night.

Inside, it was very quiet. The reading lamps were off. The long tables were bare. Dust settled slowly through the last line of light from the high window.

And on the shelves, the books began to rest.

It is hard work, being a book. All day you are pulled out and pushed in. You are opened wide. You are carried about and read from beginning to end, and sometimes from the end to the beginning.

The big atlas let out a long breath, and its heavy pages lay flat. It had shown someone the way to Brazil today.

The storybooks leaned against one another, shoulder to shoulder. Inside them, the stories were going to sleep as well. The princes put down their swords. The talking animals stopped talking. The trains stood still in the middle of their journeys, and nobody minded waiting.

In the poetry corner, the thin books whispered a last line or two, as people do when they are almost asleep. Then they were silent.

The dictionary, which knows every word, could think of only one. Goodnight.

On the lowest shelf lay a small picture book with a torn corner. A little girl had read it four times that afternoon, sitting on the floor. It was the most tired of all, and the most happy.

The clock on the wall ticked. The moon came to the high window and looked in. Its light moved slowly along the shelves, touching each title, as if it were reading them.

By the time the moon reached the last shelf, every book in the library was asleep, each with its story safe inside, ready to be opened again in the morning.