There are various reasons for that, such as the lighting, location, number and variety of books, cleanliness, and safety, but I think Mexico’s social gap is probably a big factor too.
Just about every community in Japan has a public library, and just about everyone has used a library at least once. In Osaka, there are municipalities that have mobile libraries, which I remember using when I was a child, and even after I myself had children. Perhaps it was because I was in a community where there were a lot of children, comparatively speaking in this age of declining birth rates, but it was enormously helpful to have a branch library for children near our closest station where you don’t have to be quiet because the public library was a little bit far away. And when it comes to choosing a school, probably no one considers whether you will have lots of opportunities to access books by going to that school because schools, whether private or public, have a library.
I wrote about Mexico City’s Vasconcelos Library in a previous article, and I mentioned that few people visit it despite it being a wonderful building. And while there were people who come purely to use the library, a lot of people were there just to have a look, like me, and the children’s book section was not popular. I was visiting with my family, so one of the purposes of going was to give the children some fun by reading them picture books, but the lighting was dim, I had the impression that it wasn’t all that clean, and it had few books despite being a big library, so in the end we left quite soon.
Come to think of it, I have never once till now heard a Mexican person having a conversation about going to a library with their children to borrow books. Of course, there are people who use libraries, but they might not be as common as in Japan.
Children in wealthy families can get books bought for them without using a library, and in most cases private schools have a library, but if that’s not the case, it is difficult for the family to buy books because they are expensive, and it seems the libraries at public schools are lacking in book collections. When it comes to community libraries, it seems that the libraries are nice and clean and have large collections in areas where the people are relatively rich, and then there are a lot of communities where, despite actually having a library, there are few books and almost no one uses it.
While that makes me think what a real worry it is to have such gaps, a very interesting initiative was launched in Monterrey a little while ago.
They are setting up places in parks and so on where they put books like this that people have finished reading, and you can take home a book if you want to read it. It is a rule that when you take a book home, you replace it with a book that you have finished reading. Of course, it isn’t locked, which makes me a little concerned that no one steals them or takes the lot home, but there are always a few books there, and it seems people are using it properly.
Now here is a place that my family and I are particularly fond of. It’s not a library, but a bookstore where there are lots of chairs available and it’s OK to read books there for as long as you like. It’s a bookstore for children, from the little ones to the junior high school students, and it’s a comfortable place to be, so we occasionally go there.
They had a live reading event at Halloween, but they read 3 books in an hour and a half, which was a bit long for children. All the same, I was impressed that children of about kindergarten age enjoyed listening attentively for an hour and a half.
Even though they run events and initiatives like that, people wouldn’t know they existed unless they were interested in them, and if you don’t understand the importance and enjoyment of reading books, maybe there’s not much meaning in them. In Japan I took it for granted and didn’t even think about it, but I hope that the national and local governments as well as the schools make provisions so that everyone can become more familiar with books, despite any economic gap.
