28 Books -- Day 18

[bluecastle]

With a High Heart by Adele de Leeuw (1945)

 

"So this was where she was to spend the summer! In spite of all her resolutions, the memory of Claremont's gleaming white facde with the tall square-paned windows and bronze grilles and close-clipped firs rose before her eyes. She went up the worn stairs and across the sloping porch.

 

Inside there was a strong smell of fresh paint that made it seem hotter than ever. Beyond the narrow hall a book-lined room opened out, and she could hear voices and the sound of a typewriter stuttering erratically; but a sign at the foot of the stairs caught her eye. "Librarian's Office, Second Floor." She went up the still sticky steps and tapped on the doorjamb." (page 13)

 

Summary: A spirited career book which makes ... library work really sound fulfilling and exciting. Anne McLane, at Library School, is furious when her first assignment is a quiet country library center instead of the up-to-date impressive Claremont library. The bookmobile, the warm-hearted earnest farm community with its great need for books and enterprising people to distribute them, all soon become personal and important to Anne. She changes her focus, gains new interests and values. The human side of library service, plus the necessary heart interest add up to a good modern story. [Kirkus Reviews Copyright (c) VNU Business Media, Inc.]

 

Some days I wish for more books that 'make library work sound fulfilling and exciting.'

 

I can think of a few books where the main character is a librarian ... if I think really hard. But I can't think of another book where a bookmobile figures so prominently. And this is during the rationing that took place during WWII, so gasoline and tires were a scarce commodity!

 

But it's a lovely example of its genre, and big on the power of books to transform one's life, which I can totally get behind. With a pretty good cross-section of the kinds of issues rural library sytems deal with ... economic and educational disadvantages, blindness, illness, lonely people, sad people, hopeless people... people looking for information to make their lives better.

 

To meet my trivia quotient, I looked this up in WorldCat, and 179 libraries own a copy (and it tells me the closest one is 97 miles from my house). I like the idea of libraries holding onto books about libraries!