\u201cAfter the recent death of my father, I inherited a few boxes of books he left behind,\u201d the person wrote in a letter that was shared by the library on Instagram and signed with the initials P.A.A.G.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/250815-San-Antonio-library-book-se-120p-cd21a8.jpg\")
The overdue library book was checked out in July 1943.City of San Antonio<\/p>\n
The book was a guide for parents on helping their children navigate personal relationships. It was checked out when the person\u2019s father was 11 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe book must have been borrowed by my Grandmother, Maria del Socorro Aldrete Flores (Cortez),\u201d the person wrote. \u201cIn that year, she transferred to Mexico City to work at the US Embassy. She must have taken the book with her, and some 82 years later, it ended up in my possession.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book had received write-ups in various newspapers at the time. The Cincinnati Enquirer described it in June 1943 as a \u201ccomplete guidebook to the personal relationships of the child with his family and the outside world.\u201d The New York Times noted a month later that Strain was a psychologist and mother of two who was \u201cbest known for her wise, sensitive, but unsentimental presentation of sex education.\u201d<\/p>\n
The person who returned the book wrote in the letter: \u201cI hope there is no late fee for it because Grandma won\u2019t be able to pay for it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
The library said in a news release that it eliminated overdue fines in 2021. The inside cover of the book was stamped with the warning that the fine for overdue books was three cents a day. Not accounting for inflation, the penalty would amount to nearly $900.<\/p>\n
Three cents in July 1943 amounts to 56 cents in today\u2019s money, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics\u2019 Inflation Calculator. That would add up to more than $16,000.<\/p>\n
The library noted that the book is in \u201cgood condition.\u201d It\u2019ll be on display in the city\u2019s central library through August. It will then be donated to the Friends of San Antonio Public Library and sold to benefit the library.<\/p>\n
Eight decades may seem like a long time for an overdue library book, but it\u2019s nowhere near the record. Guinness World Records says the most overdue library book was returned to Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, England, in 1956.<\/p>\n
It was borrowed in 1668, some 288 years earlier. No fine was extracted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO (AP) \u2014 A library book has been returned nearly 82 years after it was borrowed from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-70863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}