Getting Dressed out of the Dryer

WHEN I FIND THE RIGHT BOOK AFTER A PATRON GIVES ME A MISHEARD TITLE

WHEN I FIND AN ITEM MY COWORKER COULDN’T

"I MISS WHEN LIBRARIES WERE QUIET”

DESCRIBING LIBRARIANSHIP TO NON-LIBRARIANS

Female staffers adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.

“We’ve heard stories of parents saying to their kids, ‘We don’t want you to borrow books because you might be late with them and then you’ll have fines to worry about,’” he told WNYC. In fact, overdue fines can end up keeping thousands of kids from accessing library resources, just because they’re unable to pay what they owe.

I now have a new theory: Tove Jansson began her Moomin series during the Nazi occupation of Finland; Paddington Bear was modelled on the Jewish refugee children turning up alone in London train stations. Arnold Lobel, the creator of the Frog and Toad books, came out to his children as gay and died relatively young, from aids. I wonder if the truer unity among children’s-book authors is sublimated outrage at the adult world. If they’re going to serve someone, it’s going to be children.