Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books - by Kirsten Miller

Lula Dean didn't intend for the Little Library she put in her front yard to be filled with books she had requested be removed from the school and public libraries, but some stealthy young folks replaced her "clean" books with the forbidden ones, hiding them with the covers of the books she originally had in her collection. Suddenly kids know about periods, and women know about witchcraft, and some people even want to remove the statue of a slave owner from the town square. 

Burning books is offered as a solution for those works that some don't want others to read. This is the case for people on the left and the right. Lula Dean and the Concerned Parents Committee (CPC) suggest this for the books they want "reconsidered". Likewise Delvin Crump decides to burn Our Confederate Heroes when he finds it in Lula Dean's library. 

Not once in his life had Delvin Crump ever contemplated burning a book. When he'd joined the army, he had taken an oath to defend the Constitution which gave all Americans the right to free speech, including the backward-ass bastard who'd written Our Confederate Heroes. But it was time to take this piece of shit out of circulation. 

Delvin has his grill fired up when he discovers that Toni Morrison's Beloved is really inside the book cover.

Don't burn books you don't like. You cannot determine for other people what they can read. People have the right to read what books they want, and have their own reasons for reading them. 

This book has 35 chapters, each named for a book. Additionally, a number of books are mentioned in the work but do not have chapters named for them. In her author's note Miller tells the readers that some of the book titles she uses are real, and others are fictitious. I did recognize many of the book titles. Some, such as: Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret; The Handmaid's Tale; and Fifty Shades of Grey have their own posts on this blog. I was particularly interested to find How the Word is Passed among those titles used. It is a book I am currently listening to on Audible.

The town librarian Mara Ocumma is a true defender of privacy and of free speech. When Melody Sykes, one of the members of the CPC shows up at the library looking a book of poison mushrooms, Ocumma knows exactly why. Melody's nasty husband Randy is certainly worthy of a murder fantasy. However unlikeable Melody is, though, she still is entitled to good information and privacy, and Ocumma ensures she gets both.

A fun satire. 
 

Nightbitch (the movie)

First and foremost I must say how much I hate the word "bitch". I avoid using it in just about any context, which is not to say I never say it. For instance, I might use it if it were part of the title of a movie I watched.

This film is tagged as Body Horror, Dark Comedy, Comedy, and Horror on IMDB. Yes, all of those things. Most importantly though, is that the library, and a librarian play piviotal roles in this film. Although the unnamed main character (Amy Adams) claims to hate Book Babies at the library and the other Moms she meets there, she discovers that they aren't so bad after all, and furthermore, the the librarian, Norma, (played by Jessica Harper) knows a lot more than just how to shush loud patrons. She has insights into motherhood as well as book knowledge. Our heroine not only recognizes Norma's worth, she commemorates it.

Gay the Pray Away - by Natalie Naudus

 

Valerie and her brother are homeschooled with a curriculum sanctioned by the Institute of God's Basic Principles, a conservative Christian organization headed by Ben Goddard - a not-so-subtle camouflage of the Institute of Basic Life Principles once headed by Bill Gothard. Valerie has always been taught to obey her parents and the church's teachings. The seventeen-year-old is expected to marry and begin having children when she completes her studies in God's Training Academy. She interacts mostly with others from her church, and rarely talks to people outside of her insular world. Her haven is the public library - a place she is able to visit while supervised by her mother (who once organized a protest against it for "sexualizing children"). Valerie has learned to select books with innocuous covers so that her parents don't question her reading choices. It is through library books that she first learns about bisexual and other queer folks and begins to question her own identity. When she meets Riley, a "troubled youth" who got kicked out of her private Christian school for kissing a girl, she realizes that there is much that she still needs to learn. With the help of the public library's internet she begins to explore new territory, the freedom she experiences leads her to make some difficult decisions. 

This book reminded me of Pearl Abraham's The Romance Reader (which I read when it was first published almost 30 years ago). Abraham's work tells of a girl growing up in a strict Hasidic community who sneaks to the library to read romance novels.

The Neverending Story - by Michael Ende

I revisted this classic work after 40 years as part of my project to read sixty books about dragons during this year of the dragon in which I turned sixty years old. I remembered very little of the story (other than the fact that it had a dragon). 

The story begins in a bookshop, where our hero, young Bastian Balthazar Bux, steals a work called The Neverending Story. He is literally drawn into the story when he realizes that he is, in fact, part of it. In fact he is essential to it as only he can save the magical world of Fantastica.

Bastian creates Fantastica's past through the stories he tells and creates a library of them by telling The Story of the Library of Amarganth (aka The Bastian Balthazar Bux Library), a

large circular room...[where] "walls of books were divided into sections, bearing signs such as "Funny Stories," "Serious Stories," "Exciting Stories," and so on.

Like another book about which I recently blogged this book is about someone who is reading a book about himself as it is being written. See My Librarian is a Beautiful Lesbian Ice Cream Cone and She Tastes Amazing

What You Are Looking For is in the Library - by Michiko Aoyama

 

Five people, each at a crossroads in life, find their way to the Community Library, a place none of them had given much thought to before. Tomoka, Ryo, Natsumi, Hiroya, and Masao discover that reference librarian Sayuri Komachi will not only find the books that will answer your question, she also finds books to answer the question you didn't know you had. The mysterious librarian also gives a bonus gift in the form of a felted trinket to each of the seekers. The description of Ms. Komachi provides an interesting take on the old librarian stereotype, and one that demonstrates a larger than life perspective

The librarian is huge...I mean, like, really huge. But huge as in big, not fat...she is wearing a beige apron over an off-white, loose-knit cardigan...Her hair is twisted into a small tight bun right on top of her head, and she has a cool kanzashi hairpin spiked through her bun with three white flower tassels hanging from it.

Natsumi is a parent to a young child (Futaba). She works at a publishing house and before her daughter was born she was an editor for a magazine called Mila. However, when she returned to work following a short maternity leave she was placed in the information resources department where her job was 

to retrieve data for employees upon request, and seek various permissions when required...also [writing] company profiles for the website and other PR material for external use

While she does not identify herself as a librarian, those of us who do the work know what she is. 

I was particularly intrigued by this passage regarding Natsumi's work

In my Mila days, I used to have no reservations about reading at my desk, since anything could be a potential source of ideas. But in Information Resources I hesitated to do any general reading. Just in case my colleagues might think I was slacking off.

It is not unusual for people to make comments about how great a librarian's job must be with "nothing to do all day but read". You can be sure this comment will raise some serious ire, followed by an explanation about how librarians have ABSOLUTELY NO TIME TO READ as we are much too busy answering reference questions, ordering books, unjamming printers, supervising clerks, resolving database and computer problems, and a myriad of other things. Here is my truth: sometimes I was busy, and sometimes I wasn't. As a public services academic librarian I was usually pretty busy teaching classes, and helping people with research during about eight months of the year. During the summer months though I read - a lot! Much of what I was reading was professional literature, or things relevant to my research interests, but sometimes I was just reading for fun. There seems to be way too much concern that a person might have "down time" at work. In library work, no matter what your role, I would argue that reading is the best use of such time because as Natsumi says "anything could be a potential source of ideas." Generally being a well-read person helped me to answer more than a few reference questions. 

Ms. Komachi is often found busy working on her felting. When Masao finds her doing this he "sense[s] anger in her expression and she seems unapproachable." Masao had misread the expression. In fact Ms. Komachi was quite ready to help. The question of approachability has come up a lot during my tenure in public service. As I said, down time is not unusual and it is unreasonable to think that we would sit doing nothing. I was often doing research when I wasn't directly teaching, or helping someone, but that didn't mean I wasn't available. 

Hiroya is a young man who is not sure where he fits in. He is described as a NEET (not in employment, education, or training). He enjoys manga and hopes to be an artist. Ms. Komachi mentions that he seems to know a lot about manga. He responds that his uncle used to own a manga café "a coffee shop with heaps of manga...They don't have private rooms, just tables where you can sit and order a drink, then read from the manga library in the shop."

Ms. Komachi is not the only library employee of course. All the characters also get help from Nozomi, a library assistant who aspires to be a librarian. She explains to Hiroya that "if you take a  library assistant training course...then work for three years, you can qualify for the librarian training course...you can also go to university to study". Hiroya is impressed that "becoming a librarian is harder than [he] thought." This is another thing that is not well understood among the general population. In fact most people who work in libraries are not librarians. Those who are at the desk checking out books, or who reshelve returned books, or process them to be made available, or work to keep the library clean, or run the in-house coffee shops, are not librarians. In most cases, in order to get work as a "librarian" one needs to have completed a Master's degree in Information and Library Science (MILS). Although sometimes those without the degree have the title, the MLIS is the usual and accepted credential needed for professional librarian work.

Ultimately Ms. Komachi is a binding force between the characters, each other, and their community.

A story about making meaning and finding your place. I read this one aloud to my husband. We both enjoyed it. 

A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library - by Jack Gantos

 

I first learned of this "unpublished" work when I read the Booklash Report from PEN America which describes several cases of pre-emptive censorship (in which authors either change, or pull, their works before publication in response to public accusations of harm. 

When criticism of a book veers into accusations of harm, authors may feel compelled to respond to their audiences in real time—typically through social media. In some cases, this means fact-checking details that have been lost or misrepresented in the social media uproar. In 2018, for example, Dave McKean, the illustrator of the controversial children’s graphic novel A Suicide Bomber Sits in a Library, tweeted to clarify that the book’s Muslim protagonist was not in fact illiterate—a sticking point in a since-deleted, viral tweet posted by comics publisher Zainab Akhtar.

It turns out that the book never got published anyway, over charges that it was "Islamophobic". But then, I discovered that the "unpublished" work had actually been published as part of an anthology (Here I Stand edited by Amnesty International) in 2016. An interlibrary loan request brought this work to me so I could read the story for myself. 

The short story does not include McKean's illustrations (which would have appeared in the graphic novel). I think it is clear, however that the protagonist is illiterate. We see this in the very first paragraph. 

He has been told to fear nothing and that he will be perfectly safe in the library. Not even the secret police will think to look for him there, since he cannot read.

There is no indication in the rest of the story that the boy knew how to read.  

While sitting in the library the boy watches as others select and enjoy books, and begins to wonder what he is missing.

The suicide bomber...wants to ask what happens next in the story but he has been instructed to remain silent because books will master him just as they have mastered his enemies. He has been taught that books create a false life in a godless world that should not exist. Books cannot be trusted when only God has the key to paradise.

Well, this certainly reminds me of current events - censoring a book about censorship. 

Those on the left who would censor books do not like to be compared to those on the right who do the same. It is difficult to see oneself reflected in an unflattering light. For another example of left censorship see this article from The New York Times.

I end my post with this quote from the book.

He walks away thinking of the faces of the readers in the library. They were not ruined. They were happy. They were safe. Whatever power lived within those books did not hurt them (emphasis mine). 

More information about the controversy can be found in this article from the Guardian. 

Love in the Library - by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

In her Author's Note Tokuda-Hall tells the readers that this is the story of her maternal grandparents who met in Minidoka, a Japanese incarceration camp in Idaho. Tama (her grandmother) was the camp librarian, although "she didn't know how to be a librarian...In the camps people did the jobs that needed doing." Her grandmother had taken the job because "she liked books". George (Tokuda-Hall's grandfather) came every day to check out books. Tama questioned whether he could actually be reading all the long books he checked out. No, he wasn't reading them all. He was "only human". And the realization that she was the real reason he came every day dawned on her. Their love grew amidst their  whispers. 

George's "voice was so big it barely fit in the library..." Tama "held up her finger to remind him of the rules. They were in a library, after all."  

The Author's note also connects the story of Minidoka to current events. 

As much as I would hope this would be a story of a distant past, it is not. It's very much the story of America here and now. The racism the put my grandparents into Minidoka is the same hate that keeps children in cages on our border. It's the myth of white supremacy that brought slavery to our past and allows the police to murder Black people in our present. It's the same fear that brings Muslim bans. It's the same contempt that creates voter suppression, medical apartheid, and food deserts. The same cruelty that carved reservations out of stolen, sovereign land, that paved the Trail of Tears. Hate is not a virus; it is an American tradition.

Tokuda-Hall's author's note sparked controversy when Scholastic asked her to edit it in order to include the work in Scholastic's diversity-focused Rising Voices collection earlier this year. Tokuda-Hall refused and Scholastic ultimately issued an apology. More information about the request, Tokuda-Hall's response, and a link to the apology can be found in this article from Publisher's Weekly  

Jumping off Library Shelves: A Book of Poems - edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins

 

In honor of Library Card Sign-Up Month this collection sings the praises of libraries, librarians, and of course library cards 

More powerful than

the smartest phone,

more powerful than a TV remote,

more powerful than a hundred apps. 

Gender Queer: A Memoir - by Maia Kobabe

Note: The author of this work uses gender neutral Spivak Pronouns.

Topping the list of banned and challenged books for 2022 Kobabe's graphic memoir explores how e discovered eir identity as a nonbinary person starting as a toddler.

Although a late bloomer as a reader, as a teenager Kobabe discovered queer books at the library and began to read voraciously. E describes a feeling "as if lightning was coming from the pages...Electricity flowing directly into my palms" when reading gay sex scenes in the Fake Series of books by Sanami Matoh; and the Last Herald Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey.

Like Alison Bechdel (who also wrote a queer graphic memor - Fun Home) Kobabe worked in eir college library, where e came out as bi-sexual for the first time. The college library is also a space where e tries sexting for the first time. Libraries are safe spaces to try new things.

As a cartoonist Kobabe taught one-day comics workshops to junior high students at local public libraries. Keenly aware of the current political climate, e ultimately decides not to share eir pronouns, nor share that e is nonbinary with the students. E questions this decision and wonders if e is doing a disservice to them, especially as e recognizes how much it would have meant to em if e had had a nonbinary or trans teacher in junior high. The importance of representation is a crucial theme of this work, and is one of the reasons censors want to keep others from reading it.

By far my favorite part of the book is a scene in which Kobabe meets eir cousin's new baby for the first time. Cousin Josh, and his wife, Faith ask what the baby should call his grown nonbinary relative. Kobabe responds "I don't know a good gender-neutral term for 'aunt'...Can I be his librarian? Or cartoonist?"

Find out more about this book at its author from the New York Times.

The Librarian of Auschwitz - by Antonio Iturbe

People like to share memes with me about book collecting and book hoarding. These are meant to be humorous, but I generally don't find them especially funny. I do have quite a few books in my house, but I do not let them take over. I often read books from the library and then return them, or when I buy them I have a "one in, one out" policy. Purged books go to free book shelves, or are donated to libraries. They are shared. Books are meant to be read and shared, not simply put on display. I thought a lot about all of this as I read The Librarian of Auschwitz. This novel is based on the real story of Dita Kraus who, along with her family was sent to the family camp at Auschwitz-Birknenau during the Holocaust. Although she was only 14 years old Dita was asked to be the clandestine librarian at the clandestine school run by fellow prisoner Fredy Hirsch. She took on the task although the punishment for keeping the books would surely have been death had she been discovered. The eight tattered books entrusted to Dita's care were shared among the classes at the school, and otherwise hidden beneath a floor board. All the books had value, even the Russian grammar book, written in Cyrillic which no one in the camp read.

Early in the book the forbidden works are described as dangerous although they do not have "a sharp point, a blade or heavy end". 

Throughout history all dictators, tyrants, and oppressors, whatever their ideology - whether Aryan, black, oriental, Arab, Slav or any other racial background; whether defenders of popular revolutions, or the privileges of upper classes, or God's mandate, or martial law - have had one thing in common: the vicious persecution of books. Books are extremely dangerous; they make people think.

Even among the prisoners there was concern about what was to be found in some of the books. Fredy Hirsch tried to warn Dita off reading The Good Soldier Svejk, telling her that it was "not appropriate for children, especially girls". To which our heroine responds "Do you honestly believe that after observing on a daily basis the dozens of people entering the gas chambers...[that] what I read in a novel might shock me?". The same book is demonized by some other prisoners, and again Dita puts them in their place.

Reading this in light of the unprecedented book-banning that we are seeing in the United States today makes it especially chilling. Concerns about what someone might find in a book seem rather ridiculous in a country where children are gunned down in their classrooms and by police. 

In addition to the eight books, the school also runs a "library on legs". Similar to the human books in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, people who have memorized stories share them verbally.

Before being sent to the Auschwitz Dita and her family were first sent to the ghetto in Terezín, a place with a library-on-wheels, a trolley pushed through the streets which was generally "warmly welcomed" although the "books were often stolen, and not always so they could be read. They were also used as toilet paper or as fuel for the stoves".

One of the books entrusted to Dita is H.G. Wells The Time Machine. Dita determines that Wells was right, time machines do exist, in the form of books. Furthermore, she realizes that books can take us "much farther than any pair of shoes".

The Book of Form and Emptiness - by Ruth Ozeki

Please note: Because I listened to this book, there may be misspellings in character names, and quotes may not be exactly as written in the print version.

There are too many levels of meta in this one for me to follow them all. The book, in addition to narrating the lives of the characters, is also narrating itself.  

A host of rich characters populates this book: these include Corey, a children's librarian; Annabelle, a would-be librarian who had to leave library school when she became pregnant; Benny, Annabelle's son - a truant who hears voices and uses the local public library to hide out; Aikon a decluttering guru and bestselling author; and a band of colorful library patrons. 

After Annabelle's husband, Kenji, dies in a freak accident she has a hard time coping with raising her son, doing her job clipping news stories for clients, and running her home. As she begins to hoard, Benny struggles with his own mental illness and he begins to have auditory hallucinations. He and his mother share a love for libraries and both find refuge in their local public library. 

I listened to this book on audio, and there was so much in it, I will limit myself here to commenting only on the notes I made while listening.

I start with my favorite quote from the book. Librarian Corey shows up to help Annabelle clear out her house wearing a shirt that reads: "Librarian - because bad-ass motherfucker isn't an official job title".

As she attempts to console Annabelle, who is feeling completely overwhelmed and begins to sob, Corey "shushes" her. As a librarian she, of course, knows from shushing.

The books in the library calmed the voices in Benny's head. Books are described as sacred, and the libraries as temples. Stopping at the library on the way back from a psychiatrist appointment was a treat.

In an attempt to "liberate" the voices from his body, Benny injures himself with a thumbtack. Thumbtacks are described as dangerous, but not as dangerous as books. This was especially striking to me as I consider the new age of book banning that we are currently experiencing. Although I cannot recall the exact context of this description of dangerous books in Ozeki's work, it is appropriate to say that some believe that the ideas found in books are more dangerous than any of the myriad real life-threatening dangers we face daily.

Although Annabelle didn't finish library school, she clearly has a librarian's keen sense for finding elusive information. When Benny disappears she is aware that he may be with his friend who calls herself The Aleph. Searching Aleph alone wasn't enough to find her. Annabelle knew to search for "The Aleph". 

The Aleph is an artist who specializes in snow globes. The best one she makes is one for Benny that features a library scene with books and letters floating in the water.

The question "What is real?" is at the center of this work. It is a question Benny explores at the behest of The B-Man one of the eccentric patrons of the public library. It is what makes this work so meta. Is the book narrating itself, or is it Benny's head? 

Nour's Secret Library - by Wafa' Tarnowska

Based on a true story of children in Syria rescuing books from bombed buildings during a war to create a library, cousins Nour and Amir sort books into categories, clean them, and build shelves from discarded wood to create a library for their neighbors. All found books became part of the library 

big books, small books, thin books and fat books. Some were in Arabic, while others were in foreign languages - English Armenian, Greek, French, even Hebrew and Syriac.

The library was always open for those who wanted to read or learn something new.

Rescuers borrowed medical books to learn about the human body and how to treat wounds. Teachers looked for ideas for home lessons. Even Nour's Baba borrowed cookbooks to learn how to make foreign pastries and cakes, looking forward to a day when he could once again try out new recipes. 

It was especially troubling for me to read this story of a hunger for knowledge in light of  all the stories I see about those who are attempting to restrict books in the United States. No book in Nour's secret library was deemed unworthy. The books in Nour and Amir's library brought hope to all.

Reading this children's book I was reminded of The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu. Save the books!

The Reading List - by Sara Nisha Adams

 

Libraries change lives. The books we read, the people we meet, the physical space, the programs all create the magic, and community of the library. 

When indifferent library worker Aleisha finds a reading list inside of a returned book she not only changes her own life by reading the eight books, she begins to make a difference in the lives of some of the other library patrons as well. Most notable among these is recently widowed Mukesh Patel, who has yet to return the long-overdue book his wife last read The Time Traveler's Wife. Although Mukesh was never much of a reader, his late wife Naina was an avid reader and library user. Through the magic of books (and the library) Mukesh finds a new connection with his beloved granddaughter Priya. It turns out they both love Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Mukesh begins to think about everyone who is connected by the books they read.

One of the first things I learned in Library School were Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science. Although the rules were written almost a century ago, they remain quite relevant:

• Books are for use
• Every reader their book
• Every book its reader
• Save the time of the reader
• A library is a growing organism 

Each of these laws is evident in this work about people connecting through books and libraries.

The Paris Library - by Janet Skeslien Charles

Numbers floated round my head like stars. 823. The numbers were the key to new life. 822. Constellations of hope. 841. In my bedroom late at night, in the morning on the way to get croissants, series after series - 810,840,890-formed in front of my eyes. They represented freedom, the future.

So begins the story of Odile Souchet who thinks in Dewey Decimal numbers. She is thrilled to get a job at the American Library in Paris in 1939 where she can put both her library degree and her ability to speak English to good use. She has always loved books and the library, a place she frequented with her aunt as a child.  

Her job becomes a lot more challenging when Nazi's occupy her beloved "city of readers". The subversive librarians (including the aptly named Miss Reeder) find ways to continue to provide books and services to their Jewish patrons, even after the library is closed to them. Nazi's also looted libraries as well as the private collection of "prominent Jewish families" Additionally, censors regularly blacked out news from the daily papers making the sharing of knowledge that much more difficult. "Fake news" in the form of rumors also shakes up the library as a "sanctuary of facts" as patrons share misinformation with each other. 

Shushing is of course a time-honored tradition in libraries (at least as far as popular culture is concerned). While I will admit to having shushed a few exceptionally loud library users (usually university administrators) I have also, ironically, been shushed myself by people trying to study in the library, just as librarian Odile was shushed when she "screamed with joy" after returning to the library after 10 days of being away and seeing her brother's girlfriend Bitsi (who was also the children's librarian). In one passage Bitsi is described as "holding an open book over her head, like it's a roof" as if she is telling "the children that books are a sanctuary".

The story oscillates between Paris during World War II and Froid, Montana in the 1980s. Virtually all of the passages I marked while reading this are in the sections that take place in France. The only exception comes very late in the book. Lily, Odile's young neighbor storms "Dad's wife took away Forever!...She said Judy Blume writes 'smut'.' Censorship is wrong!" To which Odile responds "So is throwing a fit instead of sitting down to have a conversation...You should ask Ellie what she fears." She goes on to explain that "Ellie's scared the book will put ideas in your head, scared you'll want to experiment with sex." Lily retorts "I read Out of Africa and disn't establish a coffee plantation in Kenya!" I of course agree that censorship is wrong. I also agree that having a conversation is better than throwing a fit.

My Brilliant Friend - by Elena Ferrante

This coming of age story follows best friends Elena and Lila as they grow up outside of Naples, Italy in the 1950s. The two girls are the smartest in their class at school. While Elena is provided the opportunity to continue with her formal schooling beyond grammar school, Lila realizes that she must continue her education at "the people's university" - the public library. She figures out that she can borrow a lot more books than would normally be allowed by procuring library cards for everyone in her family, and then using them only for herself. Everyone in Lila's family is later invited to the library to be honored for being such avid readers. It would appear that Lila, her brother, mother, and father have come in first, second, third, and fourth for the most books read. Elena is also invited to the recognition ceremony for coming in fifth. No one from Lila's family (including Lila) comes to the ceremony and Elena accepts the awards for all.

The first book in a four-part series. This has also be adapted for television  - currently available on HBOMax.

The Midnight Library - by Matt Haig

Full of regrets, recently unemployed, and grieving the death of her cat Volts,  Nora Seed decides to take her own life. In the twilight world between the life and death Nora is surprised to find herself in a library and face-to-face with Mrs Elm, her school librarian from many years before, the person who had told her that her father had died when she was fourteen years old.

The Midnight Library is filled with green books, each one represents a life Nora didn't live in the multiverse. She can pick out any book and find out what her life would have been like if she had made different choices at each of her turning points. There are many possible lives that Nora is given the opportunity to visit. Would she like to be a rock star? a pub owner? a glaciologist? a vintner? What if she had married Dan rather than canceling at the last minute? What if she had just gone on that coffee date with Ash, where would she be now? Is there any world in which Volts is still alive?

Nora also meets other "sliders" - those like her who are moving between lives not lived. Each "slider" has their own guide and space in which to explore their lives. Not all sliders travel via library books - Hugo travels through old VHS tapes in a video store, with his deceased uncle as a guide, for instance. 

In the aptly titled chapter "God and other Librarians" the omniscience of Mrs Elm as Nora's guide is made abundantly clear, as is her role as a librarian. She explains to Nora that "The library has strict rules. Books are precious. You have to treat them carefully." 

The librarian stereotype is on display as well when Mrs Elm admonishes Nora to "Please be quiet...This is a library".

Ultimately Nora wishes to escape the Midnight Library, especially when she realizes that it is about to self destruct, but how does one do that when there are no doors? Mrs Elm to the rescue: "Who needs a door when you have a book?" she asks.

A new spin on an old theme. Anyone who grew up watching The Wizard of Oz won't be surprised by the ending.

Ready to Fly: How Sylvia Townsend Became the Bookmobile Ballerina - by Lea Lyon and A. LaFaye

This week is National Library Week and today is National Bookmobile Day. Ready to Fly tells the story of Sylvia Townsend who grew up in a segregated America in the 1950s. She desperately wanted to take ballet lessons, but her family could not afford them so when the bookmobile rolls into her town she asks the librarian to help her find books on ballet. She checks out new books each time the bookmobile comes and helps the other girls in her neighborhood to learn ballet too. Young Sylvia learns to dance so well that a teacher offers to pay for her ballet lessons. However, her dreams are almost crushed when she is denied a place in the "whites only" classes. Ready to give up she is given another chance to take classes when she and her friends perform in the school talent show and learn that a famous dance instructor was in the audience. 

Close Enough to Touch - by Colleen Oakley

Jubilee Jenkins' allergy to people has kept her a recluse for nine years. Following the death of her mother (who had been supporting her) Jubilee takes her first tentative steps outside of her house. Rather remarkably she almost immediately lands a job in the local public library. She also falls in love and begins a long journey towards living a more regular life.

Jubilee comes to like her job at the library and even comes up with a plan to get more people to use it when budget cuts threaten her job. 

It is sometimes harder for me to write about library-centric books than it is to write about books in which the library or librarian is only a minor part of the story. Where do I start? What do I leave out? In this case the passages I marked mostly seem to indicate things that are especially un-librarian like behaviors.

On her first day she is asked to reshelve some books "according to the numbers on their spines". I think we can safely assume these are Dewey Decimal Numbers. The Dewey Decimal Classification system isn't especially difficult to learn, but I cannot imagine that anyone would be expected on their first day of work to understand it so thoroughly as to need no training whatsoever before being asked to reshelve books. I have seen people with plenty of experience make mistakes in shelving, especially when the decimal place gets past a few digits.

There are some other very obvious places that indicate that the author perhaps doesn't fully understand library work. For instance when Jubilee is asked to fill in for the children's librarian during story time she panics a bit but her co-worker Louise assures her that "it's easy. Roger left the three books on his desk and I think you give out candy and sing a song or something. Over in thirty minutes." Jubilee does manage to get through the program and she "silently thank[s] Roger for at least picking out the right books." I can assure you that Roger didn't simply "pick out" some books. He planned a program.

Besides having Jubilee do the more difficult task of leading the story time while she staffs the Circulation desk, Louise also manages to have Jubilee do her "dirty work" for her when she decides that a patron needs to be told that she can't have "private parts up on computers" because "what if a child walks by". The fact that the website didn't appear to be porn, but rather was likely a medical site made no difference. The patron needed to be told it was "against the rules". I thoroughly disagree with this. Everyone has a right to find the information they need in the library. If there are concerns that others might see something then the library needs to figure out a way to ensure privacy. It is the bedrock of our profession.

Jubilee's love interest, Eric, discovers that the library is the perfect place not only to see Jubilee, but also to check out YA books that interest his estranged teenage daughter in the hopes that if he reads them he can get her to at least get her to return his texts. He checks out The Bell Jar, Twilight (he's Team Jacob), The Virgin Suicides, and The Notebook. He also enlists Jubilee to help him understand the works so that he can better discuss them with his daughter. The library (and Jubilee) also help him with his 10-year old son when he realizes that he cannot leave him home alone after school, and no babysitter wants to stay with the disturbed child. The provision of after-school care is a real issue for public libraries. Many families have no other options except to send their children to the library until they can be picked up when their workdays are done.

Despite its shortcomings in describing the library work, I very much enjoyed this book. It was a good, easy read during the holiday break.

The Book of M - by Peng Shepherd

May is Mystery Month and I don't really like mysteries. I especially don't like the serial mysteries that involve some amateur sleuth in a small town with a disproportionate number of murders. It seems like a lot of library mysteries are of this type. People keep recommending them to me, and I keep not liking them. However, I do like to have a variety of genres on this blog, so I googled library mysteries and found this title. The description appealed to me because it looked supernatural, surreal, and, most decidedly, not part of a murder series. If you are a person who likes this genre I do have some posts which you can find here and here.

It turned out that much of what takes place in this dystopian novel is rather prescient. A mysterious disease causes people to lose their shadows, and eventually their memories. Quarantines, food shortages, suspicion and fear abound. Shadowless people not only lose their own memories, but memories of virtually everything. Some don't remember how to eat, to read, or to talk. Women don't understand what their periods are (and as a bonus have no idea that they'd been taught to be ashamed of them). Shadowless also eventually forget that there are laws of physics, and once they forget that, they can simply ignore those laws. People can mutate themselves and others; prison cells become their own means of escape.

I read quite a bit of this without seeing anything about a library, so I naturally grew concerned that I'd been duped. Fortunately, I was reading an e-version of the book which allowed me to search easily for the word library to find out if indeed this were a library-centric book. Although the first instance of the word doesn't show up until about 40% in, it then becomes quite important. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC is the location of a battle for books between the shadowed and the shadowless. Of no surprise to this librarian the books ultimately prove to be the salvation of all. 

Goin' Someplace Special - by Patricia McKissack

A post in honor of National Book Lovers Day

In the 1950s Jim Crow south, 'Trisha Ann faces a number of indignities on her way to "someplace special". She is forced to stand in the back of the "colored" section of the bus, even as she can see empty seats in the front area reserved for whites. She can't sit on the bench for "whites only" to look at the fountain her grandfather helped to build in the park, and she is forced out of the fancy Southland Hotel after she gets caught up in a crowd of people trying to catch of glimpse of a famous person. Remembering her grandmother's encouraging words help her to make the difficult trip to the library - someplace special where she is treated with respect, a place her grandmother calls "a doorway to freedom".

Winner of the Coretta Scott King Award.