Happy Tuesday, all! Library Card Sign-Up Month rolls on! Alert Hub readers have already had the chance to vote in a Monday Poll for their favorite librarian in YA lit (spoiler alert: Lirael won).
It got me wondering, though: why are the votes for our own kind so spread, even among a group of library lovers? Perhaps it’s because few librarian characters who rise to “literary fame” are the everyday hero types. They get polarized on a spectrum that has magical action heros at one end, and shushing spinsters at the other. I suppose we can allow some of these in the service of the story, as explained by J.K. Rowling:
“I would like to apologize for you and any other librarians [crowd laughs] present here today, and my get-out clause is always if they’d had a pleasant, helpful librarian, half my plots would be gone. ‘Cause the answer invariably is in a book but Hermione has to go and find it. If they’d had a good librarian, that would have been that problem solved. So … sorry.”
But librarian stereotypes in literature are strong, and have been written about extensively. Instead, I find myself wishing I’d kept a list of the librarian characters — especially school librarians — who figure so unassumingly, yet importantly, in the lives of so many contemporary teen protagonists. Sometimes they are a listening ear. Sometimes they are a teacher. And sometimes, they are simply a person with a neutral space that is safe — safer than the cafeteria, safer than the bathroom, safer than the hallway. Much as JKR would not have had a plot without a “bad librarian” to allow a child researcher to be autonomous, many realistic fiction books would falter without the inclusion of a trustworthy, non-parent adult and a refuge in which to recover, find kindred spirits, and make plans.
Alas, my list of the Everyday Hero Librarians will have to be a work in progress, for the library-as-refuge is not a searchable subject except in my own foggy memory. What books/characters would you include?
–Becky O’Neil, currently reading Grasshopper Jungle, by Andrew Smith
Marian Ashcroft in Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s “Beautiful Creatures”.
Here are a few that came to mind: Mr Powell who introduced Doug to the Audubon prints in “Okay for now”, and the tattooed, cool Eddie a librarian in NYC who helped Theo and Bhodi in their search in “Under the egg”. And the Harold Washington Branch of the Chicago Public Library figures strongly in Blue Balliett’s “Hold Fast”–but not always as a sanctuary.
Interesting question! I notice a lack on real librarian hero characters in literature. Though a few heroic bookstore owners come to mind. Such as Luke in Clare’s Mortal Instruments series and Margaret in Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale.
Tara, I think bookstore owners probably count, in that they play a similar role plot-wise. :)