National Library Workers Day & Our Favorite Books about Libraries
My favorite book about libraries is Dewey, The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron, with Bret Witter.
This book appeals to me first of all because I love cats! And secondly, the story of how Dewey was cared for by the librarians after being abused shows the kind of love that exists in spite of ill-treatment by uncaring people. Dewey affected the lives of people who visited the library. The story about this little cat is a lesson in how kindness can be shared between humans and animals.
Elsie, Children’s Librarian
My favorite book about libraries is Man in the Empty Suit, by Sean Ferrell. A time-travel novel in which the protagonist embarks on an existentialist-grandfather-paradox mystery/crisis, this work uses libraries as an extended metaphor and explains the significance of libraries in our lives. Simultaneously (and ingeniously) plot- AND character-driven, it has two climaxes and two falling action trajectories that overlap each other. IMO, this work is a genius post-modern commentary on society, the self, and relationships that might be lost upon most people. Woe the irony.
The protagonist lends commentary on libraries mid-novel, just after the work’s character-driven climax; the character-driven falling action unravels as the plot-driven rising action builds: rather fun devices at play for a time-travel novel! Anyway, his oasis is an apocalyptic library. The ceiling of which is being perpetually repainted to resemble the most astrologically-accurate sky at any given moment. It’s staffed by starving volunteers loading book wagons all day in exchange for meals and belonging.
The inability of most to finish the novel is, IMO, perhaps intentional on Farrell’s part? Most people don’t ‘get it’. After forty years of cataloging his entire life, various iterations of himself, and all of the possible outcomes, the protagonist finds himself perplexed, and “refreshed” by the apocalyptic library’s use of serendipitous provenance: “‘If we place the books randomly, how are they ever found again?‘ She smiled. ’The books just seem to know to go where they’ll be found.’”
An overarching theme of the book is libraries as sanctuaries for enlightenment and self-betterment that defy space, and time. Ferrell’s protagonist seeks out the library in the last few pages (its roof is the harbor of his time travel raft). After saving/losing the character Lily in this timeline, it serves as his only refuge, the only place he could choose to depart from, and the scene for the book’s last moment: “I knocked, knowing that I would find a place weighed in my favor just by there being one person willing to help me more that I’d ever been willing to help myself.”
Heather, Executive Director
My favorite library book is The Last Chance Library by Freya Sampson. It is about a village library in the UK that is in danger of shutting down. The quiet, timid librarian must find her voice to save the library she loves. With the help of her regular patrons, she defends the library’s value to the community. As a library paraprofessional, this story and the main character were very relatable. We tend to think of Young Adult books when thinking of coming-of-age stories, and this book has similar themes, but the main character is in her 30s. She has ways in which she still needs to grow up and stand up, and she learns that throughout the book. In the UK, libraries being completely shut down is a current problem; fortunately, we don’t see that as much in the US, but US libraries are facing their own problems. In the same way that the protagonist advocates for her library, we have to advocate for ours. The book is very good at showing the ins and outs of the politics of the public library which most people might not regularly see or understand.
Justice, Youth Librarian
My favorite library book is So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane. It begins with a young girl, Nita Callahan, running from a gang of girls who have been bullying her at school. To escape for a little while, she ducks into the local library and goes down to the children’s section in the basement while the librarian covers for her and makes the bullies leave. As she’s hiding, she walks among the shelves and thinks about how she used to love going down there to read every single one of these books. A thread from one of the books snags her finger, so she pulls it out, not recognizing it. Its title is So You Want to Be a Wizard, and having never read it and thinking it might be interesting (or at least fun) to look through, Nita checks it out and heads home. The bullies ambush her near her house and beat her when she doesn’t fight back.
Later that night, Nita starts reading through the book and finds that it treats magic and wizardry like a real thing. It says that people who love reading, words, learning languages, learning about the world and everything that lives are capable of becoming wizards. She also finds pages in an unknown language and an Oath in the front of the book that supposedly every wizard has to recite before being granted the ability to use magic. Thinking that this is all silly and a great joke, Nita recites the Oath, imagining how great it would be if all of this was real and how with magic, she would be able to defeat her bullies. Nothing happens, as expected, but when she wakes up in the morning, something seems different and when Nita looks in the book again, she finds a wizard’s address book with her name and address listed in it!
I loved this book as a kid (and still do!) because it was fun and it was a great story about a girl who becomes a wizard and can use magic because she loves to read and learn. Throughout the book, Nita meets another new wizard, Kit, and they become friends and end up being thrown into a quest to save the world, learning a lot about how important all life is and why it’s important to do good things even if they are small, everyday tasks, because everything has an effect on the universe. I definitely recommend it!