When Oliver began work as a school librarian she felt qualified for the job. What she learned was that librarians are expected to serve as mediators and mental-health-crisis-support professionals, customer service reps and administrators of overdose treatment, fierce loyalists to institutionalized mythology and enforced silence, and arms of state surveillance. Here she highlights the national problems that have existed in library since they were founded:...

"Susan Orlean reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history, and delivers a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution--our libraries"--

Give your trustees the tools needed to translate their experiences and interests into strong results on behalf of their libraries. Sally Gardner Reed draws on her years of success leading Friends of Libraries USA to provide trustees with straightforward, easy-to-read, guidance on how to make the most of their vital role. She guides readers through important issues including sustainable fundraising and advocacy, hiring and evaluating a library director,...

The story of how a Mormon kid with Tourette syndrome found salvation in books and weight-lifting. Josh Hanagarne was born to Mormon parents in rural Utah. Large for his age, Josh was playing the role of Tree in a school play when he suddenly started twitching uncontrollably. Turns out the tree had Tourette syndrome. By the time Josh turned twenty, his tics were too drastic to ignore. Desperate for liberation, Josh tried all possible treatments, but...

Emily decides that the town of Pitchfork needs a library, and comes up with a plan to make it happen. Can she make her dream come true?

"Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly of librarian William Ottens's experience working behind service desks and in the stacks of public libraries, most recently at the Lawrence Public Library in Kansas. In Librarian Tales, published in cooperation with the American Library Association, readers will learn about strange things librarians have found in book drops, weird and obscure reference questions, the stress of tax season, phrases your local...

It has been several months since monsters last plagued the town of Stermont, and frankly Alexander Bopp (leader of the Super Secret Monster Patrol) is bored, and misses his friends Rip (immersed in video games) and Nikki (soccer camp), so when his father signs him up for a summer maker program at the library he is happy to go--but soon he starts finding weird old-timey objects, and monster trading cards, and it starts to look like maybe monsters are...

"A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being After the tragic death his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house-a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their...

Eleven-year-old Pearl Moran cannot imagine life without the historic but under-utilized branch of the New York Public Library where she was born (in the Memorial Room) and where her single mother works as the circulation librarian; the other librarians, the neighborhood people, the raccoons, and most of the 41,000 plus books all form the structure and essence of her life--but when someone cuts off the head of the library's statue of Edna St. Vincent...