One of the sixty books about dragons I'm reading in honor of my sixieth birthday in the Year of the Dragon I remembered reading this one to my now-adult child when he was little. What I didn't remember was that the unnamed narrator learned some of what she knew about dragons by reading a library book!
I found the whole story on YouTube.
My reading goal for 2024 is to read sixty books about dragons in honor of my sixtieth birthday during this Year of the Dragon. Kelly Barnhill’s Newbery Award winning book features a magical girl (Luna) who keeps a tiny dragon for a pet.
Luna was rescued as an infant from certain death by a witch. She had been left as a sacrifice by her village - all part of an evil plot by the town Elders and the Sisters of the Star meant to keep the rest of the villagers in line.
The Sisters are the only ones with access to the libraries, the only ones that is except for their parade of apprentices who were always sent away “once they became aware of how much learning there was to be had in the libraries of the Tower, and they became hungry for it”. The Sisters knew, of course, that "the last thing they needed was to allow the populace to be getting ideas. Ideas, after all, are dangerous." When the Sisters and the Elders are finally conquered their apprentice (Wyn) is the person who opens the library to all because "knowledge is powerful, but it is a terrible power when it is hoarded and hidden".
During the early days of the pandemic James and I read Kawaguchi's book Before the Coffee Gets Cold which told of a coffee shop (Funiculi Funicula) that allowed customers to time travel, as long as they returned to the present "before the coffee gets cold". There were other quirky rules to follow as well, including where a would-be time traveler could sit - only in a seat otherwise occupied by a ghost. The ghost (aka the woman in the white dress) sits all day and reads, except for one daily trip to the toilet (why a ghost needs to use the bathroom is a question asked, but not answered). It is during this brief window each day that someone else might get a chance to time travel. I did not blog about this thoroughly enjoyable book when we read it because, alas, it had no libraries.
Tales from the Cafe has more stories from café Funiculi Funicula with this important change to the set up
Until a couple of years ago, the woman in the dress read a novel entitled Lovers over and over again. One day, Miki remarked, "Doesn't she get bored reading the same novel?" and presented her own picture book to the woman in the dress.
This led coffee shop employee Kazu to the idea that she could provide new reading material to the woman in the dress with regular visits to the library. The woman in the dress accepted the fresh books, but without ever any acknowledgement of gratitude. Nevertheless Kazu continues to go the library once a week.
Both this book and Before the Coffee Gets Cold are episodic, with a unifying storyline.
A book about finding happiness.
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.
The Dissidents Season 4 Episode 6 Keeping Up Appearances: Ethics and Neutrality in the Everyday Life of a Librarian
See also The Librarians Are Not Okay
Eight years ago I wrote about the film Storm Center. I recently learned that this film, produced at the height of McCarthyism, was loosely based on the case of Ruth Brown, who was fired from her job as librarian at the Bartlesville (Oklahoma) Public Library in 1950. Robbins' book even contains a rather thorough summary of the movie. Bette Davis (who played ousted librarian Alicia Hull) was questioned about taking the role by at least one parent, Anne Smart.
Smart sent Davis a "report of the book controversy" she was causing in Marin County [California]...Her report depicted in "vivid detail...the type of material being given to our children in some schools. [The report]...made its way around the country for for several years [and contained] the names of authors "all extremely well listed as to their communist and/or communist front affiliations by various government investigating committees."
The more things change...
Brown was an outspoken civil rights activist in her town. Her racial justice work during the height of McCarthyism made her an easy target. Charges that she was circulating "subversive" materials was a façade for the real reason of her dismissal.
The back cover blurb of this work (published in 2000) reads
The fundamental issues of the Brown case make it especially pertinent today when differences - in race, gender, class, and national origin - are again feared and as challenges to materials in library collections again escalate. Ruth Brown's story helps us understand the matrix of personal, community, state, and national forces that can lead to censorship, intolerance, and the suppression of individual rights
This description is even more eerily prescient today. As are discussions in the book of neutrality, academic freedom, freedom of acquisition, freedom of access (especially to controversial materials) and the blatant sexism.
Ruth Brown was one of the women, mostly white and middle-class, who made up 88.8 percent of the allied profession of librarianship in 1950. For a salary less than a man would receive, she organized and maintained a comfortable homelike space where people, especially young people, went for wholesome enlightenment (emphasis mine). The professional role of the librarian gave communities low-cost female employees (emphasis mine) to provide healthy recreational and informational reading while it extended the margins of the domestic sphere without exploding them. The librarian's role did not transgress boundaries as long as the homelike space and the materials and activities organized in it remained safe, comforting, and submissive to the prevailing ideology...
The more things change...
The Library Bill of Rights was originally adopted by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1939 to ensure access to information (even what some might consider harmful or dangerous) to all. "The ALA articulated the importance of allowing citizens to decide for themselves what they should read, an idea Brown expressed in her interview with the city commission". This is a stark contrast to the description of the "stereotypical" librarian
in Alice I. Byran's 1952 research report, The Public Librarian...[who] was "rather submissive in social situations" and lacked self confidence. "Indiscreet" was not part of the lexicon by which librarians, especially female librarians, were described. In fact female librarians have been characterized as discreet to a fault in book selection practices, "ruthless in their own censorship." Marjorie Fiske's 1959 classic , Book Selection and Censorship, depicted its mostly female subjects as anxious and fearful, avoiding challenges to library materials through self-censorship.
The more things change...
And on a final note, we see the same ideological concerns in libraries today as libraries in Montana and Georgia cut ties with the ALA over president Emily Drabinski's identity as a Marxist lesbian.
The more things change...
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| Prof. Harold Hill sexually harasses Librarian Marian Paroo in The Music Man |
I was the guest speaker in my husband's class earlier this week. The lesson for the day was how to find information to do research on Coffee. The day before the class he said he liked to start his classes with some music and asked me to suggest something. "How about Marian Librarian" said I.
We used a video we found on YouTube. I realized while we were showing it to the class that it had been a long while since I'd seen it (certainly not since before the Me Too movement) and so I felt compelled, after watching it with the class, to mention that this display of sexual harassment was completely inappropriate.
Nevertheless James and I decided to watch the entire two-and-a-half-hour movie together that evening (it actually took two nights because the movie is so very long). I can't deny that it is a fun movie with some catchy tunes, even though the cringe-worthy sexual harassment is all too familiar to those of us who work in public services.
There is almost too much to say about this, so I will stick with the highlights.
First of all Shirley Jones as Marian is, without a doubt, the most iconic of all fictional librarians - a "sadder but wiser"... "stuck up"..."maiden lady librarian who gives piano". Lucky for swindler "Professor" Harold Hill (Robert Preston) that type of woman is exactly his "speciality".
What I remembered about Marian was that she curated a fine collection of materials for use by the citizens of River City, Iowa and was a defender against the would-be censors. Important to note, however, is that Eulalie Shinn, the Mayor's wife (Hermione Gingold), complained about what her daughter was reading, but was unconcerned that others might read the same book. Parents always have the right to dictate what their own children can read. Something Mrs. Shinn understood.
What I didn't remember was Marian's own heinous crime of ripping a page out of one of the library's books! This is simply not acceptable - even if the librarian does believe that she is going to save the City from itself by doing so.
There were some interesting things to note about the library hours. For instance, when Marian returns from work in the evening her mother asks "Library open later than usual?" "It always is" is Marian's un-ironic reply. The library was also open on the Fourth of July.
There is some serious "shush-ing" going on at the River City Public Library. Even Marian herself gets shushed by some of her patrons.
And Professor Harold Hill? As my late Grandmother used to say about my Uncle Dave "he can fall in a pile of shit and come out smelling like a rose"
