Baby book club

It is unarguable the favorable contribution libraries can make to children who have limited access to books and other reading materials. 

While community-based public libraries are easily available and usually free for children to go to in the West, libraries in Beijing do not meet the growing needs of children in quite the same way. 

This is changing though. In recent years, a number of community-based private libraries have been emerging rapidly across town with the aim of promoting reading among children. 

Information is free

The libraries, mostly located in popular communities, are run as nonprofit organizations. There are about 40 to 50 private children's libraries in the city right now. 

Many of these have been initiated by young mothers who wanted to create an easily accessible reading environment for their children, said Cheng Xin, shopkeeper at Peekabook House, Beijing's first nonprofit private children's library, which opened in 2005. 

The library was founded by four Chinese women, who learned of the scarcity of community libraries upon returning to Beijing in 2005 after spending about a decade in the US. 

With their own collections and donations from libraries in America, the four mothers, Hu Birong, Wang Yi, Luo Ming and Ning Aidong, were able to open the library in Haidian district, offering Chinese and English books to children from one to 15 years old. 

Seven years after it opened, the library has about 1,000 members, 90,000 Chinese and English books and now another three locations in Chaoyang district. 

Meanwhile, Wang Li, founder of the Blue Moon Children's Library in Haidian district, opened the library in 2009 due to both the inconvenience of traveling to public libraries and the large collection of used books from her daughter. 

Instead of throwing away the books, she rented a two-bedroom apartment in Haidian district and converted it into a small-scale library for children. 

Compared with public children's libraries, private libraries are designed with more relaxing settings, play areas and quality books. 

All of the libraries offer a wide range of books, and host storytelling sessions and workshops to promote children's reading skills and help them to befriend other children. 

"Community-based private libraries like Peekabook House don't emphasize the quantity of their books, but rather the quality," said Chen. 

"Most of the English books are brought by our founders from the US or ordered online, while the Chinese books are mostly translated versions of foreign authors." 

Jessica Zhou, who used to take her child to public libraries, has become fascinated by Peekabook House after visiting it for the first time three months ago. 

"I was told that children under six years old could not borrow books from public libraries and sometimes my child shouted out aloud, which would disturb other readers," said Zhou, a mother of a four-year-old boy. 

"Books in public libraries such as the Capital Library are of different quality and sometimes you gain so little from reading books of poor quality," Zhou noted. 

"I can tell the books at Peekabook have been carefully picked by the librarians, most of which are penned by well-known authors of children's books." 

Financial challenges 

Running as nonprofit organizations, the libraries constantly face financial challenges as they receive almost no financial aid from the government or local communities. 

One of the reasons is that they are registered as private companies and the local government has not yet figured out how to work with private libraries.

While free venues are available to some of the libraries, most of the cost comes from buying books, paying the rent and hiring staff, acknowledged Cheng. 

To make ends meet, most of the libraries charge members a sum of money from 200 yuan ($32) to about 1,000 yuan annually and host workshops and English teaching courses at a fee. 

According to Cheng, since its opening in 2005 the Peekabook House has survived thanks to its flagship shop in Haidian, but the other three branches still cost about 800,000 yuan a year, despite the venues being free of charge.  

Mo-Box Books, a bookshop and library specializing in picture books, has been losing money since it opened in 2008. 

The 400 yuan membership fee is more symbolic, said the shop's assistant Zhou You. 

"The library is managed as a nonprofit organization and our boss has been subsidizing it with money from his other businesses," he noted. 

Fortunately, in recent years, public libraries have become aware of the existence of private children's libraries and have been showing interest in offering help to them. 

"The Capital Library has been paying attention to private children's libraries and is working on how to support them," said Ni Xiaojian, who works at the Capital Library. 

For those libraries that are free of charge, the Capital Library can either donate books or send professional librarians to help their staff improve their expertise, he noted.