How many metres of bookshelf do your children have . . .

gosh what a question, my 9 year old has about 20mtrs of bookshelves, she reads at least 3 books at a time and now has a reading age of 17years which is really difficult to buy for!! She is in the middle of the Twilight series at the moment, while reading Harry Potter and The Northern Lights!!

My 7 year old has nearly 10mts of books and is catching up fast!! She is reading some Naughtiest School girl books right now, nothing like Enid Blyton to stretch the vocab!!

We also get rid of books. We either take them to DD's school for the library, school I work at, pass them onto younger friends or take them to a charity shop. I go through them every so often as her reading has improved, etc. But we also buy an awful lot, often from charity shops.

5.5m in her bedroom, all full - plus half a shelf on the downstairsbookcase too.

my brother had OVER 111m and no mistakes in typing. He recently moved to a smaller house so not sure what he has done with them...
I try not to buy any books for the children but to just go to the library with them, so 3dc have 2m of own books and 1 m of library books (they now do 24 books on 1 card, and they have 6 cards amongst the 3 of them.)

Gosh I have no idea - we have one of the verbaudet bookcases similar to this

which really only fits his baby books (up to 2 yrs) Keeping these out as DS2 will be along soon.

Then he has one expedit shelf/cube, and the equivalent of that size upstairs for his bedtime books.

Fortunately the books are getting slimmer as he gets older! (hes 2.5)

I barely ever buy new books - most are hand-me-downs or car boot buys or presents.

DD has in excess of about 10m

I have 27m plus lots

I do set books free - but I am also a massive re-reader

Get. rid. of. books...?

Nope, don't understand what you're saying!

don't think I could start to measure tbh...

DD, aged 2, has about 8 metres or thereabouts.

But she has all of my special books from when I was a child (first edition Dahls, Narnia, the Classics etc) for when she's older on there too.

I. Do. Not. Throw. Away. Books.

[librarian]

oh, and they have about another metre at my parent's house as my mother buys books in charity shops and we leave some of them up there for them to read on visits.

Yoho I didnt get the class reference either!

DS and dd combined have about 4m - they would happily triple that given the chance
They havent got into novels yet so its just picture books and big reference books atm

I encourage weeding of all their posessions every 6 months and try to limit their shelves to "quality stuff"

DD who is 5 told someone recently "Mummy doesnt like Dora!"

dd is 4 and ds1 is 3.

all told, between the playroom shelves, the stack in the dining room and what's in their bedrooms i's guesstimate about 3m of books

i'm a serious bookwprm though and was buying books when i was preg with dd before i bought baby clothes

Ds1 has 3 meters
DS2 has a wicker box full

I am plamning to take them to the local baby group and sell some of them on for 50p each

I love books, we have loads of them and I find it very hard to get rid of any thing but absolute tosh.

I love having them around - to me they're as much a part of the furniture as our chairs & tables.

I can understand people feeling differently, but can't quite see what class has to do with it?

2.9yo DS has about 3 metres (one of the wide Ikea Billy bookshelves)

11mo DD has about 1 metre (one of the slim Ikea billy bookshelves)

As they are so young they haven't really grown out of any books yet, but I do throw out the ones they chew and rip to shreds.

I find it so hard to get rid of books.
My DD's 4, and we've still got quite a lot of younger (maybe even babyish) books - as I think 'ooo that might be good for her to read herself'.

don't do one in one out - that's mean - but do weed regularly.

I weeded my bookshelves recently (I have metres and metres and metres - easily 35-40m and it was far more pre-weeding) and got rid of about 12 cardboard boxes just by taking out the repeated editions, tat and falling-apart stuff.

A good tip (if they are older kids) is to stack books two-deep in the shelves. Most standard bookshelves are deep enough to fit two sets of paperbacks. Obviously this doesn't work with picture books and odd formats though, and you do have to group them by size for it to work well.

Then occasionally you can rotate and have lovely surprises!

I halved ds's about 2 years ago (he has about 2 metres now
I took a 1/4 of dd's old baby and toddler books away about a year ago and sold them on ebay in lots of 6 or so.

LOL @ middle class obsessions.

My dad thinks I've become a snob - ie I'm now not working class enough for his liking (his resolve on this subject was strengthened a few years back when I confessed that the bright red Skoda - you know the lada skoda type - not the nice new ones - was embarassing for me as a teeanger).

Anyhow, I digress, when they had to move into a smaller house they had to sort out their collection of nearly 10,000 books and reduce dramatically.........and they're working class as they come

oh lord knows - I haven't unpacked all the books yet - filled one "standard" (you know average bookcase you can buy in argos/ikea etc) bookcase, DS1 has got 2 small shelves on the shelves under his cabin bed and I've got a couple of boxes still to unpackk...........

Get rid of books - NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(well only ones that have been ripped/chewed beyond repair - I can't stand damaged books and would rather source another on ebay/2nd handbook shop than have a destroyed book on the shelf ).

They have books on their shelves that belonged to my DB and I when we were little (so proper Hansel and Gretel and other lovely gruesome endings in fairy tales

I think it's good to get rid of books. I've never understood this middle class obsession with hoarding books. In my view, they should keep on moving around.

Obviously there are some special ones which we want to hang onto, otherwise we should let go of these dust catching, shelf hogging things.

My 4 kids have about 12 metres of bookshelves which is too much but I am forever weeding out books and bringing in new ones.

I've got about 10 metres for three children. Periodically I go through it and sling the not read/overly cute/disintegrating stuff.