Upon a friend’s recommendation, I read a wonderful story in The New Yorker the intertwines the visionary establishment of children’s rooms in New York libraries by Anne Carroll Moore (who uttered the above) with legendary Harper’s children’s editor Ursula Nordstrom (her collection of letters, Dear Genius, is an amazing chronicle of 20th century children’s lit and would make fodder for a fabulous children’s lit survey course someday) with E.B. White and his editor wife Katherine and White’s authoring of Stuart Little. Whew.
Moore, visionary in her programming, collection development, and library-as-place, stakes her claim on White, only to hate the book when it comes out years later!
Still, Moore reminds us that transforming libraries is nothing new — it’s been going on for years. The idea that children could get a library card when they were able to write their name? Moore’s idea. Storytimes? Moore’s idea. Boys AND girls in libraries? Moore again. Open shelves? You guessed it. “Learning for personal and aesthetic growth,” as the AASL Standards point out? Turns out it’s not quite as revolutionary a statement as one might think when we realize Moore, well, did that, too. (For more on this idea, see The Shifted Librarian.)
But this is by no means a sugar-coated biography. Moore is a lioness when it comes to resource selection, literary criticism, and running her department (even after she retires!). Don’t miss this article.
(Image by Ian Falconer — with a nod to Garth Williams! — from The New Yorker )
