BOOK CRUSH:
AN INTERVIEW WITH AN CELEBRATED LIBRARIAN:
Long before she emerged as the nation's most celebrated librarian, Nancy Pearl found a refuge from an unhappy childhood in her neighborhood library in Detroit.
Pearl, 62, says her mother was "depressed and angry," her father "anxious and raging." But despite their flaws, they were readers.
Her mother began taking her to the library when she was 4. By 8, Pearl was going solo, befriended by librarians who "happily and caringly fed my reading needs."
By 10, Pearl knew what she wanted to do when she grew up. In 1998, she created the program "If All of Seattle Read the Same Book," an idea that has spread to more than 400 communities. She also served as the model for a toymaker's 5-inch-high librarian action figure, that goes "shush."
Now Pearl has published her third book of recommended reading "for every mood, moment and interest." Book Crush: For Kids & Teens is a kid-friendly version of her earlier books, Book Lust and More Book Lust.
It touts abouts about 1,000 books for infants to teens. It ranges from Marc Brown's Arthur the Aardvark series in a chapter titled "Ahh, Those Adorable Anthropomorphic Animals," to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which she calls "Alice in Wonderland for horror fans." It's in the chapter "Up All Night," which warns: "Don't hand these books out to kids on a school night."
Book Crush is one of a growing number of books about books for kids. Also out this month is The Kids' Book Club Book by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp which includes recipes and activities for some of the same books Pearl recommends, including Gennifer Choldenko's Al Capone Does My Shirts and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Pearl includes chapters on graphic novels ("Not Your Parents' Comic Books") as well as favorites from her childhood ("Smells Like Teen Nostalgia").
She advises parents to consider the "emotional readiness" of young readers for certain titles and notes that librarians like to say, "There's something in libraries to offend everyone — it wouldn't be a library, otherwise."
She also tells parents who are concerned about a book's contents: Read it yourself first. "Don't rely on anyone else's description or recommendation. Not even mine."
— By Bob Minzesheimer