Every library has a dragon sleeping underneath it. The dragon needs stories and quiet to keep it asleep lest it awaken and wreak havoc upon the world. It is also true that all librarians are wizards and are in charge of keeping the dragon in its dream state.
Young Kit discovers that she is a wizard when she meets Faith Braithwaite, Head Librarian of the Chatsworth Library "a boring-looking concrete building with automatic doors that didn't work right..."
I had some concerns with some of the things in this book:
In one passage Faith tells Kit and her friends that there are certain books that they keep away from the general public "because they're dangerous...[they] have power even if you're not a wizard". She goes on to explain that they can change you into a marshmallow if you're not careful, but frankly it just sounds like good old censorship to me. Dangerous books indeed!
In another Faith asks Kit and her friends to help shelve some books:
"You just need to match the number on the spine to the number on one of the shelves. There's a list of where you'll find each number, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quickly". Right, because everyone knows that there is no reason to train people who work in libraries how to properly shelve books. Sheesh.
Faith also asks Kit to do story time, even though Kit doesn't like to read out loud. Kit in fact does a crappy job of it. Well, she just needs to practice. Story time takes more preparation than simply picking up a book and reading it to a group of kids. It's takes planning. At the very least we'd expect that the person conducting the story time had read the book at least one time before!
Librarians may not be wizards, but we are trained professionals.
One of the sixty books about dragons I'm reading for the year of the dragon in which I turned sixty.
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