Our nearby county pool is closing for the summer on August 11. I did a double-take when I read that date. How is this possible, I wondered, particularly since the eleventh is not even mid-August?

Then I remembered: insidiously, someone at some point somewhere decided that school should start at the hottest point of summer. No sane person in earlier times would have entertained the thought, not only because of the need for families to have agricultural help, but because sweltering classrooms before jiffy-freeze air-conditioning would have roasted everyone alive.

Blissfully, mid-August was still treated as summer during my childhood. Lakes and swim clubs were full. Gardens groaned with produce and fluffy pink blossoms on mimosa trees perfumed the air. By late afternoon, the hot air stood still, awaiting either the onset of a thunderstorm or the first chirps of bugs who crept out at sunset.

We fought summer’s heat at the pool or with the garden hose. We also fought it by spending afternoons in the library. Our branch library was new and air-conditioned. Most importantly, I could walk to it. In those days, anywhere a kid’s legs could take her was safe to walk. Having the library just four blocks away was thrilling. To top it off, I had to cross one main road, entailing the additional thrill of waiting for the walk light.

To my young eyes, the new library was marvelous. It had everything I dreamed about and was so big. In reality, its square-footage (6,200) was not much greater than the high-ceilinged mega-houses that fill today’s up-scale neighborhoods. But it was the biggest interior space I’d ever felt was “mine.”

Reading books at the library was grand fun, particularly if I could sit on the floor right before the shelves. Eventually the librarian would shoo me to the tables, which did not appeal to me. So I’d scoop up as many books allowed (a pile that uncannily matched the space of my book bag) and trudge home to collapse in the living room where curtains were drawn to keep out the afternoon’s heat. Next to the sofa, one table lamp burned. Beneath it, I would read.

At summer’s opening, we would receive little embossed booklets for writing down the titles and authors of our summer reading. Each completed page got a stamp (today it would be a sticker I suppose). How we cherished watching the line of entries grow from one page to the next. Filling it meant we’d “arrived.” We had done what the librarian, our parents, teachers, even God Himself, expected of us. Or so it seemed to me.

These precious reading logs have apparently morphed in most places into non-tangible pdf. files, if kids keep them at all. For that matter, who among young folks reads today for fun? According to a survey I just saw involving people born since 2000, just 1 in 10 of them read for pleasure. Yes, you read that correctly. Ten percent read regularly for pleasure. That means 90% do not.

Every generation laments the regrettable cultural tapestry woven by the next. Certainly we kids of the 1950s and 60s gave our parents plenty to worry about (it turns out our parents were right to worry).

But this is something different. We are fully in the post-reading age, joining that dubious accolade with our other post-modernist labels, including post-morality and post-Christianity.

In the circles where you and I travel, this drastic statistic about reading does not ring true. But across the culture, we see the implications. Beyond the ignorance in which so many young people live, what is the sadder thing here? The fact that these non-reading kids have their faces transfixed by an addictive small screen that offers, at best, superficial rewards? Or the fact that they will miss having both their young and adult lives molded by the joy of reading?

And by reading, of course, I mean more than reading the books themselves. I mean the joy of hearing the phrase “Let’s go to the library!” I mean, too, the gleeful process of selecting too many books and, with a frown, culling the stack down to the then-allowed number, carting the stack home, and organizing the titles somewhere in the house. Then comes the moment to invite each book to the reading spot, be it sofa or rocker, picnic table or back seat of the car. This non-reading generation will also miss the panic of gathering the books before the fearsome due date, back when there were due dates rather than endlessly renewable boxes to click on line.

Now don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate on-line catalogues and the ability to reserve a title or trigger an interlibrary loan. Theoretically I appreciate the means for library patrons to download books, although, seriously, I cannot read off of tablets. I have tried. I continue to try, but it never works unless I am under severe duress, a.k.a., out of books.

But a child’s life of books needs to be a visceral experience, an in-the-hand physical experience.

So, while this audience really doesn’t need the encouragement, let us rejoice that summer still reigns, even if a school-start date is looming. The libraries are cool places, waiting for our children. If there’s no summer-reading booklet available, then make one. Or seek out a publication such as ones I just discovered from Memoria Press: 100 Days of Summer Reading.

There is a limited window for a child to embrace reading, particularly now that the seductive rays of screen technology prowl the path. Try never to be too busy to read to any child who touches your life. Try often to go, yet again, to the library. It’s a tall order, I know. But one worthy of our devotion.