This
past August, I attended a professional institute with 50 other library
professionals at a beautiful Maine mountain resort. We enjoyed meals and
participated in workshops for two full days, facilitated by RIPL, the Research
Institute for Public Libraries.
During
the workshops, we were often instructed to break into small groups of two to
six to discuss the ways we can improve our service to the residents of the
communities we serve. We also discussed how we were already doing a terrific
job as librarians.
In
one such small group on the second day, we were asked to turn to the person
next to us and recall an inspiring story of our work. It could be something we
had done or something we had witnessed at our library.
Now,
give me a keyboard and some free time, and I won’t stop typing. Ask me on the spot to think and I’m
tongue-tied and brain dead! One time, in
a professional meeting, participants were asked to go around the room and share
some little-known interesting fact about themselves.
When
it came to my turn, and after an awkward silence, a friend and colleague
sitting next to me jabbed me in the ribs and said “You have a dish fetish!” I
laughed and announced to the room that, yes, I did have an addiction to
collecting, displaying, using, and storing dishes of all kinds. At least the
silence turned to chuckles.
Back
to the institute in Maine. I thought, hard, and a memory materialized somewhere from the recesses of my brain.
I
turned to my partner with a smile. “I can go first,” I said (much to her
relief) and I began to tell my story.
I
began my professional career as a children’s librarian as soon as I graduated
with my master’s degree. Spending my days in the children’s room of a library
was a no-brainer for me. I loved
working with children, it was an extension of my days spent mothering my
daughters. And my name (my past married name at the time) was Mrs. Rabbitt. A
perfect name for a children’s librarian.
And so Mrs. Rabbitt’s new career began at the
Peterborough Town Library in New Hampshire. The library served the community of
Peterborough and the families and children in the surrounding nine towns.
Families with children from infancy through high school began to rely on my
expertise in children’s literature and my passion for librarianship. I loved my
job there for four lovely years.
It
was a tough decision but in 2004 I had decided to move back to Massachusetts to
be closer to my now-adult children, an elderly aunt, and a directorship in a
central Massachusetts town.
Now
you must fast forward to the spring of 2013 when one day a former Peterborough
colleague stumbled upon a post on an online blog, ShelfTalker for Publisher’s
Weekly. He included a link in his email and wrote – “You must read this.”
ShelfTalker has many contributors and one of
them is a bookseller, children’s book author, and avid reader, Elizabeth
Bluemle. She is also the owner of the children’s bookshop, the Flying Pig Bookstore
in Shelburne, Vermont. Elizabeth’s blog
post that month was titled “The Best Author Letter Ever.”
In
ShelfTalker, Elizabeth relayed the story of a now-seventeen year old teenager
named Sylvia. Sylvia had just written to
her out of the blue to thank her for writing a book that had changed her life a
decade earlier when she was eight years old in 2004. The “book” wasn’t actually a book, but an
unpublished manuscript that had found its way into her hands. Sylvia continued
her story in her thank you note and Elizabeth posted it in its entirety.
Sylvia
had spent her short childhood unable to see clearly but when she was eight
years old new technology finally gifted her with glasses – “enormous,
larger-than-Harry-Potter” glasses. Huge that they were, she could actually see!
Yet near-sighted Sylvia was a bit terrified of the world and she became more
introverted, spending her days and nights reading everything she could get her
hands on. And what she desperately wanted was to read was a great book about
girls and a great book about that girl’s love of glasses. She begged her parents
to find one. And that’s when she and her mother made their regular visit to the
library and, Sylvia wrote, they “enlisted the help of one extraordinary world-class children’s
librarian, Charlotte Rabbitt.”
By
this time, as you can imagine, tears were streaming down my face as I sat in my
office reading Elizabeth’s blog post and Sylvia’s letter. I vividly remembered
that day Sylvia came with her mother to the library with her request. Their
family was one of my favorites. Older brother Peter was a member of my Redwall
Fan club and my Pizza-to-Pages book club. Sylvia was sweetly intent and always
ready for a reading suggestion.
One
characteristic of librarians is their innate desire to find answers … and their
quest to put books in everyone’s hands. After searching for books that met
Sylvia’s specifications, a book about a girl who loves her glasses, I came up
with a few things … but not the right thing. I enlisted the help of peers in
the children’s librarians’ world through a list serv and soon heard from
aspiring author, Elizabeth Bluemle. She sent me the unpublished manuscript of a
book she was hoping to get published, Iris Spectacle: Accidental Private Eye. I
called Sylvia’s mom and told her I had something very special for Sylvia to
read.
In
her letter to Elizabeth, Sylvia wrote that she read and re-read that book. She
bragged to her friends that she had a book that wasn’t yet published. Most
importantly, she believed that girls who had glasses were invincible and also
very, very cool.
I
contacted Elizabeth and told her just what the blog post, and Sylvia’s letter
had meant to me.
Many
stories and letters find their way back to us, the librarians of the world. There
are many times when we learn that we are able to change a tear into a smile, or
frustration and sadness into understanding and joy. Sylvia’s story is just one
of them.
