The Library: “safeguarder of intellectual freedom”
When there is so little joy for Liesel Meminger in her hard daily life, she finds solace in books. In fact, defining herself as The Book Thief is what catapults Liesel away from the grief of her young brother’s death and her mother’s leaving her with foster parents. However, it is not good enough to possess a book, one must also know how to read it and so the great love between Liesel and her new “Papa” begins and grows as does her small collection of books, her personal library: “The Grave Digger’s Handbook, Faust the Dog, The Lighthouse, and now The Shoulder Shrug.” Although these books are treasures for Liesel, nothing can prepare her for her first viewing of “The Mayor’s Library: Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see the paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the gray, the every-colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Liesel Meminger had ever seen. With wonder, she smiled. That such a room existed! … She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them. One shelf against the other. And she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat… How many books had she touched? How many had she felt?”
What an elation for Liesel! What uninhibited joy she feels in the Mayor’s Library, even if it is fleeting and she must leave to return to daily hunger, sadness, and fear: her life in WWII Germany. This invitation from the Mayor’s wife to view her son’s private library — This unexpected and unimaginable gift, it breathes life into Liesel. Touching the “spines” of the books sustains her, the “music” they make feeds her soul. When Liesel is called to do the most dangerous “work” for Germans, hiding a Jew, she with summon the “patience and fortitude” that her love for books and reading has provided.
“Two marble lions named Patience and Fortitude guard the most recognizable library in The United States — The New York Public Library’s famous research building at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue…The majestic central building symbolizes all public libraries, where everyone — rich or poor, young or old — has equal access to the wealth of knowledge that is our heritage. As a treasure-house of thought from which to protect the future, the repository of ideas both familiar and provocative, libraries safeguard intellectual freedom for us all.” The Inside Outside Book of Libraries by Roxie Munro and Julie Cummins allows the reader to appreciate the importance of public libraries in The United States and how the variety we possess “safeguards our intellectual freedom”. This freedom is what Liesel strove for each day, for herself and for Max, the Jew she skillfully hides from the Nazis.
A Bookmobile begins the Inside Outside journey winding its way along a country road, perhaps to serve a rural community with the gift of books. The variety of libraries represented showcase many in NYC: Chatham Square Library located in Chinatown reaches its public by providing materials in both English and Chinese. The Andrew Heiskell Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped offers multiple ways to “serve people with visual and other impairments” including the means for “Both children and adults to borrow braille and recorded books, as well as audio play-back equipment, for home enjoyment.” And also in NYC we find Explorers Club Library which is both library and headquarters for the Explorers Club and its worldwide membership. Imagine visiting “the Sir Edmund Hilary Map Room on the sixth floor with over 5,000 maps, including early charts and members’ hand drawn sketches of remote regions. All areas of and aspects of exploration are covered by the library’s collection, which includes books written by members as well as diaries, photographs, and artifacts from legendary exploits: Admiral Peary’s sledge, the globe Thor Heyerdahl used in planning his Kon-Tiki expedition, a giant stuffed polar bear from the Chukchi Sea in the Artic, and an ancestor totem from New Guinea.” Outside of NYC we are awed by the Rotunda Reading Room in The Library of Congress. Did you know that “It receives and keeps one copy of every book copyrighted”? And did you also know that at the Folsom State Prison Library, “Inmates who work as clerks in the library earn a day off their sentence for each day worked. Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, a 14 mile stretch of land, “is not too small to have its own library. The value of a library is measured not by floor space or number of books but by its usefulness to the community it serves.”
In The Library we follow the reading life of Elizabeth Brown who “Entered the world Skinny, nearsighted and shy, and with an unstoppable appetite for books. Elizabeth reads, and reads, and reads and keeps her books until eventually: “volumes climbed the parlor walls And blocked the big front door, She had to face the awful fact She could not have one more. Elizabeth Brown Walked into town That very afternoon. Elizabeth Brown walked into town Whistling a happy tune. She didn’t want a bicycle, she didn’t want silk bows. She went straight to the courthouse — ‘May I have one of those?’ The form was for donations. She quickly wrote this line: ‘I, E. Brown, give to the town All that was ever mine.’ ” This irresistible character written by Sarah Stewart and illustrated by David Small gives all she has to her community, creating the Elizabeth Brown Free Library.
Thomas Jefferson, who penned The Declaration of Independence, was just such a lover of books. “Tom rode, hiked, sang, and played the fiddle, but he loved reading best. While at college, he read fifteen hours a day… Tom married, and he read. He built a house, and he read. And Tom made sure his children read, too… Tom belonged in that library at Monticello. He never wanted to leave his wife, Martha, his children, his farm, or his books.” But Thomas Jefferson was called to serve his country, eventually becoming our third president. “While president, Tom doubled the size of the country and more than tripled the number of books in his library… After two terms as president, Tom retired to Monticello surrounded by family, friends, and books.” In 1814 The Library of Congress was burned by the British. “Three thousand precious books, gone forever.” Thomas Jefferson was called upon once again and donated his personal collection of over 6,500 books to start a new Library of Congress.
Thomas Jefferson believed “All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.” And “Tom’s collection never stopped growing. Two hundred years later, the Library of Congress owns more than 155 million items on over 800 miles of shelves in 470 languages. It adds around 11,500 new items each day: movies, music, drawings, maps, newspapers, magazines, posters, photos, speeches, and… books, books, books! Over 35 million books…”
So students of all ages, with your library card you can find all you need. Just ask Eratosthenes, chief librarian at the great library in Alexandria Egypt. With the knowledge that the great library of Alexandria held (found on scrolls in ancient times) and his own unstoppable thirst for problem solving, Eratosthenes “calculated the circumference of the earth to be 252,00 stades, or 24,662 miles. “When the earth was remeasured in this century, there was only a two-hundred-mile difference between the modern day figure and the one that Eratosthenes had calculated over two thousand years ago! Eratosthenes’ measurements provided the first accurate, mathematically based map of the world. His “Geographica”, the first geography book of the world, was now complete.
Or ask Library Lil who manages to transform the entire town of Chesterville into avid readers, including the transformation of Bust-’em-up Bill into Bookwork Bill. He becomes a storyteller to rival his “master”. And “When the Springfield librarian, Molly McGrew, By mistake drove her bookmobile into the zoo, she might have invited some initial resistance but soon the animals, “Forsaking their niches, their nests and their nooks, They went wild, simply wild, about wonderful books.” Molly creates not only readers, but writers too: “Imagine the hippo’s enormous surprise When her memoir was given the Zoolitzer Prize.”
With a library card in hand you can read all you want, become who you want to be, and perhaps most important of all put that doubt to rest.
Quotations in this post are from primary sources listed and pictured.
