“This Book is Overdue” and serendipity in the archives
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 | By Library Goddess | 1 Comment
Just finished reading Marilyn Johnson’s newest, This Book Is Overdue, and was again reminded how much I love delving into archives, those lovely collections of papers, books, photos, etc that form the basis of good historical research.
WCPL has an archive, small but interesting to a library director who needs a five minute break. Yesterday’s find was buried in handwritten notes of a library meeting at the Drexel Institute of Technology on February 18, 1937. A WCPL librarian, who I don’t know, went to that meeting (I hope she had enough money to partake of the luncheon, cost 50 cents). She, except for one sole librarian all of WCPL’s directors have been women, attended a session on good books for children. She listed lots of titles with a note next to each as to why it was recommended for purchase for public libraries.
And, there in and among those long ago titles is Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder with a note “wonderful!” Seventy-three years ago that book was a hit, one that every public library probably purchased with scarce funds in the midst of a depression. It’s still a hit and WCPL carries it.
Finally, if you look carefully on our shelves in j Fic you’ll find the 1940 edition of Wilder’s The Long Winter. That’s the year it was first published. There are other, similar gems in this library.
I love the plucky, can-do attitude that Ma and Pa Ingalls demonstrate in that series of books, and I can definitely see how that was reassuring reading during the Great Depression. Heck, I like to read them now, with the shadow of the Great Recesssion looming: “Well, honey, I can always build us a house with nothing but an axe and a few bars of ‘The Gal I Left Behind Me’ and ‘Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines’!”
Checking out a first edition of The Long Winter sounds great. I’ll come over and look at it! Thank you!