The Biography of a Book: How a Madison Reading Project Book Gets from a Warehouse to the Classroom

May 5
3 min read

Volume I: The Warehouse

The life of a book is a dull one.

Take it from me - a book. A book who has been sentient for all of several days. All I can say I’ve done over the course of those several days is sit in a cluttered warehouse, listening to the whirring of a furnace and the buzzing of fluorescent lightbulbs.

I’m packed tight in a cardboard box with other books my size. There are no fingerprints on my glossy cover, no dog-eared corners on my pages. I’m as fresh off the press as a book can be without still having wet ink.

One day, finally, something changes. I’m bundled neatly into a pallet with dozens of other books, then mummified under layers of industrial plastic wrap. The pallet is lifted and loaded into the trailer of a truck. Where will it take me?

With a jolt, the truck roars to life and begins to move. Every turn is cautious, so as not to send heavy pallets of books smashing into the trailer’s walls. There will be no bent pages or jammed spines on this driver’s watch, even as the truck rattles and wobbles over cracked pavement and potholes.

The truck’s engine sputters to a stop. There’s the thud of a slamming door, boots crunch over salt and slush, and then, the trailer door yawns open. One by one, the pallets are unloaded from the truck bed. I feel a wave of warmth and hear excited chatter — I’m back indoors.

Volume II: The Center

With a r-i-i-i-p, the sharp edge of a boxcutter splits open my pallet’s packaging, and eager hands tear the plastic away. A woman in thick-rimmed glasses reaches out and selects me - me! - from the neat stack.

She turns me over in her hands and opens me - for the first time, I’m an open book. My pages are

sticking together; she gingerly peels back each one, my spine crackling. Am I about to be read?

Not this time - the woman closes me gently and tucks me under her arm, then strides across the room, sneakers padding on the floor. She adds me to a bookshelf.

From up there, I can see all of the room’s floor-to-ceiling shelves, thrown into relief by the weak winter sunshine that’s filtering through the wall-to-wall windows. The woman and a few other people are fishing books out of the pallets and flitting about between shelves. The room is thick with that new-book smell — you know it, the sticky, synthetic aroma of glue and fresh ink that makes your nose scrunch. No used books in sight, with their vinegary, mildewy odor and missing pages and broken spines.

Is this a library? A bookstore? It’s something else entirely.

No one will read me here, but something tells me that will come soon.

I can’t wait.

Volume III: The Bus

But I do wait, until after a few days, I’m eased off the shelf and loaded onto another truck - but this one is much different than the other. It’s a small red bus with bookshelves in it. Strange. I’m slid into an open niche in one of those shelves, between two other books my size, and the bus begins to move, emitting a low rumble as it rolls down residential streets.

The bus parks outside of an elementary school. Children approach, waddling behind their teacher like ducks in a row, all rosy cheeks and pigtails and pom-pommed hats. They clamber up onto the bus, clumsy in their fat winter parkas but careful not to track in any slush on their boots.

They scan the shelves dubiously. I know what they’re thinking: Free books? This must be a trick. But it’s not - their teacher has told them to pick whatever book they’d like. With a little bit of nudging, they begin to explore the bus. When they find a book that catches their eye, they loosen it from the shelf and run their tiny fingers over the cover, feeling the raised lettering and admiring the bright illustrations.

It’s not long before I’m jostled from my nook in the bookshelf by a small girl. She stares at me,

awestruck. My pages are aflutter as she flips through them, then she pulls me in tight to her chest.

She smiles, because she knows this book - my every page, my every letter - is hers to keep forever. It’s suddenly very clear to me that at last, I’ve reached my final destination.

Madison Reading Project’s new book center opened January 1st at 2939 S. Fish Hatchery Rd. Suite #100, Fitchburg, WI 53711, and already, brand-new books have passed through it on their way to the bookshelves of public school educators and students.