Books Mislaid

A while back, I found a book about West Virginia in the children's room.

Not so strange, being as how our library is IN West Virginia and it was a juvenile book. Turned out, though, it wasn't our book. We didn't even own such a volume.

The stamp inside the book said it belonged to the Wade Thomas School Library. Curious, I thought. I'd not heard of any area school called Wade Thomas, but I'm not from around here so what do I know? The book sat around the circulation desk for a couple of days before I got around to actually looking up Wade Thomas School on the internet to get an address so we could send their book to them. Turns out Wade Thomas School isn't in West Virginia at all. It's in San Anselmo, California.

The question arises, how the heck did a book about West Virginia owned by a library in California get into our children's room?

Couldn't tell you. Don't know for sure. Our best guess is that some kid from San Anselmo was taking a trip to West Virginia, perhaps during Spring break, and checked the book out at his school library to learn about the place he was about to visit. Why he should visit our library and not only take it inside (bad move) but also leave it behind (worse move) we still don't know.

We called the librarian at Wade Thomas School and told her we had their book. They were thrilled we'd found it and did indeed want it back. It seems their kids had just started book reports about states and they had been relieved that no one had chosen West Virginia because their only book on the subject was out.