Power of Books: That Book Woman by Heather Henson

My name is Cal
and I can help Pap
with the plowing
and I can fetch the sheep
when they take a-wander.

And I can bring the cow home too
come evening time,
which is right handy,
seeing as how
my sister Lark
would keep her nose
a-twixt the pages of a book
daybreak to dusky dark
If Mama would allow.

Being way up in the Appalachians, as high as the hawks fly suits Cal just fine. Not "born to sit stony-still, no scholar-boy," Cal doesn't miss hiking a jillion miles down the creek to school either, and he sure doesn't miss reading that "chicken scratch" that Lark loves so much.

So when a a britches-wearing lady comes riding up the trail, Cal sure doesn't share Lark's excitement when she finds that the rider is a "book woman," one of the "Pack Horse Librarians" sent by the Federal WPA in the Great Depression to bring library services to remote rural areas. He watches with scorn while Lark reaches out eagerly for the treasure of a new book to read and the promise of another every two weeks.

Cal is impressed, though, when the book woman continues to come, through rain, fog, and freezing days of early winter. And one day, a day when deep snow, harsh winds, and lowering skies keep even the wild things "a-hid," on a day when the family keeps the door tightly sealed against the invasive cold, there's a sudden tap-tap at the door.

And there she be--
wrapped tip to toe!
She makes her trade
right through the crack
to keep us folks
from catching cold.
I stand a spell to watch
that Book Woman
disappear.
It's not the horse alone
that's brave
I reckon,
but the rider, too.

There must be something mighty powerful in book reading if it keeps his sister enthralled through the long winter and that book woman riding through such storms to bring the books to her, Cal sees. With just a look between them, Lark quietly makes a place for Cal beside her and begins to teach him how to read that chicken-scratch like she does.

And come spring, when Ma shyly offers the book woman the only thing she can spare to give her, her berry pie recipe, the lady listens to Cal read his first book.

"That's gift enough," she says.

Evocatively illustrated in ink, chalk, and watercolors by Caldecott artist David Small, Heather Henson's That Book Woman is a great way to open the eyes of modern children, who often have too many books to count, to what a library and the promise of plentiful books can really mean in the life of a child. A great read-aloud during Children's Book Week, this book has been praised by reviewers for its poetic prose and memorable illustrations which show how it once was for children for whom the chance to read a book was a wondrous gift.

Superhero of the Stacks: The Librarian of Basra: A True Story of Iraq by Jeanette Winters

"In the Koran, the first thing God said to Muhammed was 'READ.'"

As the threat of war drew near in the early spring of 2003, Alia Muhammed Baker, chief librarian of the Central Library of Basra, knew that her library, which held modern books and ancient manuscripts, including a 700-year old biography of Muhammed, was under a grave threat of destruction by the bombing and the fires sure to follow. Permission to move the books to a safe place was denied by Iraqi officials, and Alia knew that she was on her own in protecting her precious store of knowledge.

As the destruction of the initial "shock and awe" attacks began, her staff fled the city. Alia turned to her library's neighbor, Anis, whose restaurant was just on the other side of the wall surrounding the library. With his help over 30,000 books were passed over the wall and hidden inside the well-known restaurant, safe from the soldiers and from the looters who followed. Much of the library was moved before the building was completely destroyed nine days later.

Fearing that Anis' restaurant would meet the same fate, Alia hired a truck to move the books, bit by bit, to her own and others' houses in the suburbs.

In Alia's house books are everywhere, filling floors and cupboards and windowsills. Alia waits. She waits for war to end. She waits and dreams of peace. She waits ...and dreams of a new library, but until then, the books are safe, safe with the librarian of Basra.

While Winters' folkloric acrylic illustrations and soothing deep blue borders soften this account of war for younger readers, the terror of the attack, with warplanes in the sky and tanks in the street, is symbolically evoked by the orange and red hues of the sky over Alia's library as the invasion advances. Still the war is background to the central story of this brave woman, for whom books are "more precious than mountains of gold." Alia's courage and resourcefulness in spiriting her collection into safe haven in her home and those of her friends is the real matter of this story. Leaders, good and bad, and wars, just and unjust, come and go in human history, but Alia's belief is that libraries are the custodians of civilization and must be preserved for the future at all cost.

The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq is aimed at school-aged readers. For older readers, Mark Allen Stamaty's graphic novel, Alia's Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq, tells the same story in greater detail with a bit more realistic impact.