Submitted by Aja Hope, Library Services Coordinator

When I was young, I had a tough time reading. My mother would sit down with me and go over and over the stories of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys until I was tired, and the words blurred on the page. “These are the classics!” she would say, and I tried as much as I could to understand that these are stories that are beloved even though I did not like them at all. As a teen reader, I openly declared war on the classics, instead of reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, I readily dove into Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and instead of reading Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Now as an adult reader, I am wondering if there is something that I missed in not reading those extremely popular stories that have been adapted and repeated in various formats throughout time. I wonder if by reading them I can gain some insight into the nuances of the world.  

In the Village Learning Place library these days, we have a display of classics, those bestselling novels that are considered to have changed the literary world and influenced the stories that are told and retold since their publication. This display, created by Library Associate, Shivani Hamilton-Seth, is ever-evolving. Village Learning Place Library carries many remarkable stories and novels in its collection, and through this ever growing and expanding display we hope to highlight the most notable donations. We invite the patrons of Village Learning Place Library to see for themselves the hidden gems VLP has to offer, we invite you to check out a few of the “Golden Oldies”. If the idea of classics causes you to rebel, like I once had, that’s alright. We have plenty of authors who can help you on your journey, from Patterson, Baldacci, and Rice, to Leviathan, Sontag, Steele, and many others.