In the new books shelves at my friendly, local public library
I just found the 2024 book by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann titled The
Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of
Reading. I have been enjoying that collection of about sixty brief stories. Here
are two examples.
Lorrie Roussin is a librarian at Luna Middle School, in San
Antonio, Texas. There is an story by her starting on page 11 (in the preview at
Google Books). Pages 15 and 16 say:
“ ‘Ms. Roussin! Ms. Roussin, Ms. Roussin, Come here!’
The student storms into the library, calling for me at the
top of her lungs. ‘Ms. Roussin, you’ve got to come here!’
What did I do? This is the same girl who came to me a few
days ago, reluctantly looking for a book to read for class. I’d handed her All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.
She stands in front of me, still worked up. ‘Ms. Roussin,
this is the first book I’ve read that had me in it.’ It just blew her
away.
The same thing happens with another student. Over the
Thanksgiving break, he takes home a stack of books, including All American
Boys.
‘Ms. Roussin,’ he declares when he returns, ‘I read this
book. Then my brother read this book. And then my mother read this book. And
then my grandmother read this book. And now she says she’s going to by me all
of this author’s books.’
There’s no better feeling than knowing I helped make this
connection, not only for my student, but for his entire family.”
The Wikipedia article about Jason Reynolds says of All
American Boys that:
“The book depicts a black teenager assaulted in a
convenience store by a white police officer who wrongly suspects him of
stealing. The book is written in two voices, with Reynolds writing from the
point of view of the teenaged victim, Rashad Butler, in a hospital bed, while
Kiely wrote the character Quinn Collins, a white teenager and family friend of
the police officer, who witnessed the violent attack.”
Susan Kehoe is the owner of Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Her story starting on page 29 says:
“ ‘It’s great that you love books and want to work at a
bookstore,’ I tell the potential employee sitting across from me. ‘But do you
also like to clean toilets?’
It’s a valid question.
People always say they’d love to open a bookstore or work in
one because they have this romantic notion of walking around all day with their
nose in a book or sitting in a big, overstuffed chair drinking tea and talking
about Dickens.
That’s not the reality. Part of the job is dealing with
unexpected problems like clogged toilets and other little disasters that happen
every day at the store – like sweeping sand.
A lot of sand.
Browseabout Books is located a block and a half from the
ocean, in the middle of a mile-long boardwalk. In the summer months, we have a
constant influx of sand. People coming up from the beach wearing bathing suits
and bikinis are covered with it – and, when making purchases, they pull moist
money from strange places.
Our 13,000 square-foot store attracts a mix of locals and
tourists. In addition to books and menu items from a small café, we sell a
little bit of everything – toys, games, even stationery. Working with an
artist, we’ve created a line of jigsaw puzzles and other higher-end,
gift-quality items that people want to take home with them. We’re big on
changing up merchandise because we want everyone who comes into the store to
have a unique experience.
But books are the heart of what we do, and books offer a way
to escape reality and immerse the reader in another world. There are millions
and millions of books out there, and people keep returning to the store because
they trust our recommendations.
Especially those for kids. Everyone says kids don’t read
anymore, which I don’t find to be true. We have so many enthusiastic kids
leaving the store with stacks of books. They’re staring at computer screens all
day long, so having a physical book in their hands, I think, allows them an
escape.
I love it when a parent comes back and says, ‘My kid wasn’t
a reader, but you guys suggested a book, and I gave it to him, and he hasn’t
stopped reading. It’s like this whole new world has opened up for him.’
Knowing we can literally change someone’s life is pretty
cool.
And it never gets old.
….We’re well known in beach-reading circles. Elin Hilderbrand, the bestselling author and ‘queen of beach reads,’ is a store
favorite. I felt like we made it when she gave us a little name drop in her
book Golden Girl – her main character, an author, mentions starting her
book tour at Browseabout Books.”
Back in high school I found a life-changing little book by
George Polya titled How to Solve It: a system of thinking which can help you
solve any problem. It gave me a whole new intellectual toolbox – which I used
in my careers in applied research and engineering consulting.
The toolbox cartoon came from Openclipart.
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