On the morning of Saturday, the second of May, Aanya Banerjee walked the four blocks from her family's flat on Gottingen Street to the Halifax North Branch library to get her first library card. She was six years and one month old.
The Halifax Public Libraries system allows children under twelve to register for a card with a parent or guardian present. The card is free. The borrower is responsible for the books.
Aanya's father, Rohit, had been telling her about the card for two weeks. He had explained that the card would be hers, in her own name, with her own number, and that it would mean she could take books home from the library by herself, the way an adult could.
She had asked, three nights in a row, how many books she could take. He had told her ten at a time. She had asked what would happen if she did not bring them back. He had told her she would not be able to take any more out until she did.
She had thought about this, and asked, on the third night, what would happen if she lost one. He had told her the family would have to pay for the book, and that he trusted her not to lose them.
She had thought about this too. She had decided, on her own, that she would take only seven books out, not ten, because seven felt like a safer number to her.
The library opened at ten. Aanya and Rohit arrived at five past. There were a few other families already inside. Aanya went directly to the children's reference desk, where a librarian named Marguerite was working.
Marguerite had been a children's librarian at the North Branch for twenty-one years. She has registered, by her own estimate, more than four thousand first library cards. She still treats each one as the small ceremony it is.
Aanya stood at the desk. She put both hands on the counter, which she could just reach. She said: I am here to get my library card. Marguerite said: That is wonderful. Let me get the form.
Rohit filled out the form. Aanya wrote her own name at the bottom, in the practiced block letters she had been working on at home. She wrote AANYA BANERJEE, with the B reversed, and she did not notice the reversed B until Marguerite gently pointed at it.
She wrote it again. The second time it was right. Marguerite said: The first time was also fine. Many adults reverse their letters. Aanya looked at her father. Her father nodded. The first AANYA stayed on the form.
Marguerite produced the card. It was a small plastic rectangle with the library logo on one side and a barcode on the other. Aanya's name had been printed on it in a moment, on a small machine behind the desk.
Aanya held the card in both hands for a long time. She turned it over. She held it up to the light. She put it in the small zippered coin pocket of the small green wallet her grandmother in Kolkata had sent her for her birthday.
Then she went to choose her books. She had a list. The list was in her own handwriting, in a small spiral notebook. It had four titles on it, which she had been collecting from her older cousin in Dartmouth over the past two months.
The list was: Frog and Toad Are Friends, by Arnold Lobel. Henry and Mudge, by Cynthia Rylant. Pinkalicious, by Victoria Kann, which her cousin had insisted on. And Owl at Home, also by Arnold Lobel.
She found three of the four on the shelves. Marguerite helped her place a hold on the Henry and Mudge, which was out. The hold was the first hold of Aanya's library life. She watched Marguerite type it in.
She chose four more books on her own, by walking the early-reader section and pulling books that had covers she liked. She chose a Mercy Watson, a Little Bear, a picture book called Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, and a book about a baby elephant that turned out to be too young for her.
She decided, at the counter, to put the baby elephant book back. She said: I have seven now. I said seven. Rohit said: Seven is good. The book about the baby elephant went on the cart to be reshelved.
Aanya checked the seven books out herself, on the self-checkout machine, with Marguerite standing behind her. She scanned her own card. She scanned each book. She watched the screen update each time.
The receipt that came out was long. It listed the seven books and their due dates. Aanya folded it in half and put it in the front zip pocket of her backpack with the seven books, and she carried the backpack home herself even though her father offered.
At the table that afternoon, she lined the seven books up by height. She read the first three chapters of Frog and Toad aloud to her father. She got every word.
A library card at six is not a credential. It is the first agreement a child enters into with an institution larger than her household. It says: You may take these things, on your own word, and bring them back.
Aanya brought all seven books back on the twenty-third of May, on time, in the same backpack. She checked out seven more. She has done this every other Saturday since.
