By Eric Braun
Is taking your child to the library quaint? When the World Wide Web puts the knowledge of the earth at your fingertips? When iPads seem more popular than books? Of course not! Libraries are cooler than ever, and kids, of course, love nothing more than a playdate with mom or dad. Taking kids to the library is a great way to connect with your family and community.
To get you pumped up for Take Your Child to the Library Day—a day of observation that was conceived by Nadine Lipman, a children’s librarian in Waterford, Connecticut, and has been celebrated on the first Saturday of February since 2012—here’s a roundup of library love from around the Internet.
Awesome Outdoor Libraries
Flavorwire collects 20 outdoor libraries and bookstores from all over the world. I can hardly think of anything that sounds better than browsing books under the sun. Forget surfing the Web—at this pop-up library on Sydney’s Bondi Beach you can surf the ocean, then read a book without your feet leaving the sand.
Awesome Librarians
Courtesy of Buzzfeed, here are 9 Reasons Why Librarians Are Awesome. Read the post to find out about wine librarians, a gorilla librarian, a guerilla librarian, and more.
Librarian Tattoos
I wonder if accountants get money tattoos or lawyers get tattoos of whatever thing symbolizes lawyers. If they do, I doubt any of those tattoos are as cool as these. Check out Tattooed Librarians and Archivists for a fun stroll through the wonderful world of librarian tattoos. 
Imagine getting shushed by this librarian. Not specifically library-related, but you can also find some great literary ink at The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide.
Little Free Libraries
Sometimes taking your child to the library is as simple as walking to a neighbor’s yard. These cuties are popping up all over my neighborhood; I hope you’re as lucky. Click here to order one for your yard.
More Amazing Libraries
Libraries are for reading, researching, reflecting, probably some other quiet-sounding r-words, but that doesn’t mean they’re restrained. Check out Slate’s list of some of the coolest, most unusual and beautiful libraries in the world. Fodor’s collects “stunning” libraries in this post, and Mental Floss gives us “62 of the World’s Most Beautiful Libraries.”
Book Boat
Norway’s weather can get pretty harsh in the winter, so not everyone can easily take their child to the library when they want to. What’s a library-loving Norwegian to do? Enter the floating library, Epos. As this article on Thor News explains, “Epos’s main purpose is to enrich hamlets, located in the west coast of Norway, that don’t have their own libraries.” The floating library has about 4,000 books and audiobooks to check out.
More Weird and Wonderful Libraries
Wow, this post at Lit Reactor features a ton of super quirky but wonderful libraries around the world. From the Biblioburro delivering books by donkey in rural Colombia to the Camel Library doing it humpback in northern Kenya—not to mention a pink saucer-shaped library in Italy that’s designed to look like a glowing UFO at night—there are a lot of really great libraries here.
See you at the library this weekend!
Eric Braun is a Minneapolis writer, editor, and kid at heart. He loves his library!
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