It’s gingerbread time in the library again. Middle school library, subbing there since September. The sixth-grade math classes have come through all week with a project to teach ratio and proportion using graham crackers and candy. Plus gobs of icing. Apparently, they do it every year. A much-anticipated event. I was the lucky sub who got to go down to the cafeteria at lunch time and divert 100 milk cartons out of the trash to use as the forms for their little gingerbread houses. Into the library came the candy donations—enough to delight Hansel and Gretel and then some. Hands-on to say the least: Seventeen pounds of candy, 14 boxes of graham crackers, 24 tubs of icing and several dozen youngsters with the collective self-control of a puppy. You do the math: it’s a recipe for disaster.

But no, aside from Skittles and vanilla frosting everywhere, the lessons went off quite well, and the finished creations have been left behind to decorate two long, chest-high book shelves near the door. Two dozen charming miniature domiciles, layered thick with gum drops and peppermints, slathered with frosting, into which is pressed fist-fulls of candy and licorice. Architectural marvels, what with all that weight. We put them on doilies and set them out on the book stacks, once we swept away the “Books I’m thankful for” display. It’s one of the many aspects of library work I love—here, and in the public library—marking the seasons, the passage of some otherwise pretty long school days, and celebrating anything. Anything. So, this season as you enter or exit the library, the air is thick with confection, like running a sugar gauntlet. It is absolutely the picture of sweetness and childhood innocence.

Until today. Today, after some particularly rowdy eighth graders clear out, I go to check the display, and sure enough, the math is off: once there were three little jelly jars filled with Skittles adding a cheery, colorful “pop” on the book display, now there are two. What, what?! Some jerk stole the candy?? It’s not a small jar. They just lifted it right off my display and walked out. (Speaking of “pop!”) But here’s the thing: it wasn’t meant to be eaten. This is the candy I swept off the tables and maybe even the floor after each class, and I repurposed it as a decoration. Whoopsie! So aside from pinging on the CA Assembly Bill 418 ban on red dye No.3, it also carries with it a little more than—er, pixie dust. I hope Mr. Subtraction gets a serious stomach-ache.

Now that our pre-holiday bubble of childhood innocence and sweetness has burst, I realize the class project itself is a study in middle school life and, for that matter, on modern education. Rather than wax unqualified on the subject or take your last can of Hoo hash, I can tell you, happily. Kids are still reading. They are. And they appear to be learning still, as evidenced by this confectionary math lesson. All visions of sugar bums aside, I’m enjoying the library post. No, I don’t want the job, even were I qualified. As if SOLs weren’t bad enough, we now have growth assessment testing and book “de-selection” to contend with. And they’re spending hours staring at screens. Seems to me Willy Wonka had a thing or two to say about that, and he certainly wasn’t qualified. Seems like a page—a really big, obvious and colorful page—straight out of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Growth assessments, my patootie. People. The King has nothing on!

Bill drives for this school. If I arrive before 8:30 and it’s warm enough out that they have the doors open, I can see clear through to the bus loop where Bus 139 may be idling with its 57 little heads just waiting to be released and Bus Driver Bill at the wheel. He has his hands full with children as well this season. On his elementary run, the little darlin’s are racking up so many referrals that two are “this” close to being kicked off the bus. Santa, make that a supersize on the coal. Maybe he’s driving the siblings of my media thief. I’m still bummed about that candy. Since the dirty deed, I’ve eyed the students coming though all week, checking out books. Do reading children steal? Seems like an oxymoronic impossibility if they’ve read the 100 best books. In broad strokes, in a classroom and in life, you can usually tell who hasn’t.

I’ll do some math for you. Twenty-five years ago, our first walked through the doors of this same school when we moved to Mechanicsville. We’ve gone from four to six to seven and back to four. Soon we’ll be halved, into a two we’ve never been. This nest came half full. More math: One year and a day ago today, Ellie walked across her graduation stage with two and half majors behind her except for the one she wants: Archeology. Now she has been at home 104 days longer than anticipated or hoped and has applied to two dozen different internships and programs, trying to launch herself. She is tense with waiting and sick of limbo life. Fingers crossed and Twizzlers twisted. Sophie is 155 days from graduation from UVA, which she eyes with a sweet mix of readiness and remorse. She recently spent 11 hours and 42 minutes on an all-night train to interview for her next stop: graduate school. Just walked out of her campus library where she was furiously studying, rode the train all the way to her illustrious destination and then back to exam land again. Quite a ride. And Will is graduating as well and waiting on his—wait, you’re doing the math, right? For the last quarter of this year we have had three, count them—three of our people waiting on college acceptance letters. I thought my head would pop off last month what with all the deadlines and essay editing. There’s not enough chocolate in the world to solve these anxiety woes. But let me tell you the amazing tale of number seven. To do that, I need to bring you back into the library, into the happy industry happening here on a random third block in December.

But what’s that going on at the back table? Those boys in the corner? Wait—stop the donuts, Homer. The visions of sugarplums halt like a needle dragged across a record. All the other groups are working along obediently and contentedly. Little clusters a young’uns all designing and building, affixing gum drops or making marshmallow chimneys. Teacher circulating – Don’t eat the candy it’s for decoration, don’t lick your fingers, don’t fling the frosting, don’t poke your buddy with the plastic knife don’t…don’t…don’t. But what ho, Table 5? Their laughter rises above the bubbling, busy din of small groups at work on their gingerbread houses. Now the one is backing away from the table and laughing at his friend, whose forearms are covered, covered, in white icing. He holds up both arms like a surgeon backing into a surgery bay and sure ’nuff, he or one of his friends have seen fit to ice the fellah, hand to elbow. Cake boy is laughing and looking sheepish right up until he makes contact with the teacher. Uh oh. Cue the Oompah Loompas.

We, the library elf helpers, are pursed lips smiling as we relieve the boys of their plastic knives. Their table looks like an explosion at Honeydukes as we escort them to the boys’ room for a little clean up. In the next scene, the guilty four are seated separately and frosting-free at tables far removed from their classmates, hunched unhappily over math work sheets. One more group project down the drain for misbehavior. Oh dear. Sigh. I have to say. I could not help but know those boys. Like, really really know them. And I could not help but to heart them, these boys. I wanted to reach out to each of them with, well… a really good book, as I did mine when we had reached the end of (this) line. How do you know them, you might ask? Because I read that book. It’s huge, filled with ups and downs and plot twists you could never imagine. It’s a wonderful tale. This being the chapter where our boy, our beloved number seven, scores the golden ticket for his next adventure (Appalachian State) and closes the longest chapter on children in our home. His antics are but a gleam in the far, far distance and we are full steam ahead. First star to the right and straight on to morning

Meanwhile, you’ll find me right here at the “circ” desk. No, not circus. Circulation. Checking out books to pre-teens and thieves. What are we reading? Oh, just a couple a childhood classics—Impulse Control for Dummies and another favorite: Eating Yellow Snow and Other Stories.

Hope you have a SWEET Christmas and a delectable New Year!

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