A Book For Every Reader

I’m back from a pretty amazing trip to the 2014 Kansas Library Association Conference in Wichita, where I spoke to youth services and public librarians. The librarians of Kansas ROCK, people. They do something so important with so very little. Not only do they do that, but they greeted me at the airport like this. I mean, COME ON.

I came back really inspired and even more enthusiastic about libraries than before. Here’s the speech I gave to the librarians at a very early morning hour:

Thank you. My name is Erin Blakemore. I’m an author and a historian and I’m visiting from Boulder, Colorado. My first book, The Heroine’s Bookshelf, covers the lives of twelve kick-ass women and the literary heroines they gave to us, but it’s also a love letter to books and reading, because of course before I was a writer I was a reader, a hardcore one. Flashlights, closets, all that. I’m also a library school dropout, but we’ll get to that later.

I’m so nervous today, and so proud to speak to all of you. You’re my heroes and heroines, you see, and it’s not often an author gets to address her heroines. I couldn’t be more excited to be here, and to give you a reminder that you—the librarians—you’re so important. I say that as an author who’s so aware of the role libraries play in publishing, but I also say it as a historian who literally cannot do my job without you. And even deeper than that, I say it as a reader who has spent my entire life comforted and served so deeply by libraries.

Now, I could continue with the lovefest, and truly I’m tempted. But I’m here to talk about something specific this morning, something to perk you up along with your coffee. It’s the simplest idea in the world, but it couldn’t be more important. It’s the idea—the proclamation—the manifesto that out there in our vast, impatient world is a book for every reader, a story for every single one of us, that book that can change our lives.

I want you to raise your hand if you found YOUR book—the book that changed your life.

For once in my life I’m in a room where nobody is going to argue with me. Books change lives. If it’s trite, it’s because it’s true. There’s power in a book—potential. And there’s something different there for each reader who encounters it. I’ve always found that to be the most exhilarating part of being a writer—the knowledge that my work is only half the story. Because the best, biggest, most terrifying, most beautiful thing about a book is what it becomes when it meets its reader.

I want to tell you a story about a girl who grew up to be a prodigious reader. She’s not me, by the way. But she could have been me if I were born in England in 1816. Our little reader had terrible vision—she was nearsighted. She grew up in a time and a place where the modern library was literally not a thing. There were no libraries. The only way she could get a book was through a private library, or if a friend or family member lent it to her, or by buying it herself. Later in her life she may have subscribed to a library with her pocket money. She would have fallen on her knees and thanked God if she knew about our modern public library system.

Now, I wouldn’t call her a reluctant reader. More like a born one. She grew up in a family of prodigies, shall we say, and was one of those freaky little kids who reads way too much way too quickly in way too sophisticated a manner. But there was one book that was her book.

We might think it kind of run-of-the-mill these days, certainly not enough to inspire much of anything, but our little reader found it endlessly fascinating. She’d read the Arabian Nights, and plenty of novels, and was very well-versed in the politics of her day, but this book was different. It was called A History of British Birds, and it was a sort of field guide to the birds she saw around her near her home in Yorkshire. And it was stuffed full of engravings. Men hunting, country scenes, and of course birds galore. It was a kind of love letter to pre-Victorian England, and it fired her imagination. It was realistic and fantastical all at the same time, but it was a natural history book first and foremost. It was all about art, but it had to do with the things around her, familiar things. She began to read it obsessively, and then trace its engravings on paper, and then draw them from memory. It inspired her to become a visual artist. Nobody told her that she couldn’t because she was a girl. Nothing mattered when she was reading Bewick’s book. It was HER book.

And of course when you read Jane Eyre, you learn that Charlotte Brontë never stopped thinking of Bewick’s book. She didn’t go on to become a visual artist—she went on to become a verbal artist, in part because of Bewick’s British Birds. It’s in Jane Eyre, of course. Jane reads it when she is a little girl, curled up in the window all alone. But it also informs Jane Eyre. That realistic-but-somehow-better vision of life. That minute detail. Bewick’s Birds WAS Charlotte Brontë’s book. We might not have Jane Eyre without it.

This is just one of the ways that a book finding its reader can change the world.

We could name examples all day. The kid who can’t get into books but reads a psychological thriller and decides she wants to be a cop. My brother who dismissed all reading until Harry Potter reeled him in. Now he reads huge chunksters, you know, tomes, doorstops. The reluctant reader who opens up Captain Underpants and says WHOA. That’s more like it. We’re all readers in search of our book.

And that’s where you come in. You and your crazy rules and your laws of library science.

The first law: books are for use.

The second law: every reader her book.

The third law: every book its reader. And so on.

See, I told you I went to library school.

As librarians, you have the most exciting job in the world and the most daunting task in the world. You get to create libraries that are reader-centered, that are patron-focused. You get to open up options. You get to facilitate those connections.

And I want to talk for a minute about one of the best ways you can do that—a way you can bring your expertise and your education and your knowledge really deep into the work of helping readers find their books. You can fight book shame.

I kind of cursed myself by writing a book about classic literature. Whenever anyone looks at it and then looks at me I can see this look of horror come over their face and then the apologies start rolling. Oh my God, you’re going to think I’m so uneducated, but I just never got into To Kill A Mockingbird. Could never finish it. Or, don’t judge! I didn’t read any of Jane Austen’s books. You can see the self-censor just shut down the conversation and a book like mine becomes a symbol of shame instead of an entrée into one facet of the world, one kind of book.

I see this a lot when it comes to women’s fiction and YA as well. I was in a writers’ workshop a few weeks ago with about 30 other writers of different experience levels, different genres. One of the participants kept raising her hand to contribute, and she had some really excellent examples. But she prefaced every example with “Ugh, I hate to admit I even read this stuff, but in the latest Jodi Picoult book” or “You know, I shouldn’t use this as an example, but in The Help…” etc. etc. etc. She was truly embarrassed to have read and enjoyed and taken writing lessons from books written for women, by women. Books that, from a pure financial perspective, are undeniable successes. This book shame seems to be in full effect when it comes to books like Twilight and 50 Shades of everything. It extends over to genre fiction and books for young readers.

But you, the people with the most exciting and daunting jobs in the world—you can fight book shame. You can proudly acquire the books that people want to read and reread. You can put them on display in your library and you can talk about them with your patrons. You can create an atmosphere in which every book is a book to be read and enjoyed. After all, each book could be THE book for a reader. There’s no way of knowing.

We all know it’s a hard time for a librarian these days. Your library is expected to be more than it’s ever been. Some of your patrons are in turmoil and need more than you could ever give. Money’s tight. Books face challenges based on their content. (Captain Underpants, I’m looking at you.) There’s an MLS under every rock and around every corner. There are all sorts of questions hanging over us about the future of books and reading.

But what I don’t question—what I’d never question—is your ability to help every reader find his or her book. You can arm readers with the book that will open up a whole world to them—the story that helps them see what they could be and who they are now. It might not feel like it, but every day you go into work and do your job is another day of possibility and potential for your patrons.

And believe me, they’re noticing. In fact, despite all of the questions faced by authors like me and librarians like you, the thing almost no one questions is the importance of libraries and librarians. I’m a researcher, so of course I went hunting for some statistics before I spoke to you. I came across a Pew study called How Americans Value Public Libraries in their Communities. And what I found was so heartening. 95% of Americans ages 16 and older agree that the materials and resources at public libraries play an important role in giving everyone a chance to succeed. 95% say that public libraries are important because they promote literacy and a love of reading. And women, lower-income adults, people who have attained a lower level of education, and African-Americans and Hispanics are all more likely to claim that library services are “very important.”

When I first encountered the library, I was a very small girl with a very troubled family. There wasn’t any extra money lying around. My mom was trying hard with very few resources, and she had a boisterous kid and a baby. We’d walk to the Oak Park Branch Library in San Diego and see Mrs. Walton. She was the children’s librarian and she was so. tall, tall enough to be the mom of a star basketball player. I found out later that she was a social worker and a really extraordinary woman, but to me, a little girl itching to get out of myself, she was a friendly soul. She was like the human equivalent of an air traffic controller. All I had to do was listen and go in the direction she suggested, and suddenly I was in Portland, Oregon, being annoyed by my sister Beezus. Or Concord, Massachusetts, complaining that Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents. Or in a covered wagon jostling across the prairie. Suddenly I was bigger than myself and better than myself and I had found MY books and been changed for life. And my story is so commonplace that it’s almost silly to tell. Remember how many of you found YOUR book?

I’m going to close with a quote from a man who’s probably inspired everyone in this room in one way or another: Mr. Rogers. If you’re part of my generation, you were probably partially raised by Fred Rogers, and if you’re of an older generation you probably watched Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with your kids. Mr. Rogers had many occasions to help parents learn how to talk to their kids about traumatic and scary situations and national disasters. And he had this to say about how he dealt with stress and trauma in emergency situations:

“My mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”

If I know nothing else, it is that life is a long emergency, whether the volume is turned up or down. You are our helpers in this emergency of life. You are the librarians, and you have the most exciting job in the world and the most important task in the world. Keep helping us. Keep throwing us our lifelines. Help every reader find her book.

Thank you.