The Librarian in Picture Books

An exploratory exercise on Librarian-based illustrations in Picture Books
By Jewel Gomes, Anandita Rao and Sujata Noronha

For most of us who work at Bookworm, a library-based organisation, the library is our universe. From reading other research on the library as a place and the place of the library in literature we have been thinking and seeking more understanding around this construct to both understand ourselves and our work but to also look at how positioning these pieces of literature on our library shelves can impact our readers. We are also curious in trying to understand how the place of the library has been changing and if literature records these shifts.

In books for middle school and older, we are quite easily able to talk about how the library is positioned in say J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series ( interestingly, a magical space that needs little human agency, it operates on its own but is a good place), or in Roald Dahl’s Matilda with the library as an empowering space for a very young girl. In Cervantes’ Don Quixote the library is the reason Don Quixote becomes a knight in a kind of interesting way of reformation. We are awed by Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind where the library is not for public, but a secret place that holds the key to a mystery. We are very amused and fascinated by Chris Grabenstein’s work in Escape from Mr Lemoncello’s Library where the library is a fantastical game board. In The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, we are expectedly disturbed by the plot of an escape from the library , in a book with pictures by this gifted writer! For readers of my generation, a stand out reference to the library remains in Agatha Christie’s Body in the Library, where the library was a mere setting but critical enough to make it to the title and immortalise the library as a place on a book spine on popular bookshelves. There are the definitive texts like Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose and Borges Library of Babel and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 where the library functions as the space- craft for many larger ideas around reading, the reader, technology and such. From our newest arrivals, The Library Book by Susan Orlean brings us sharply to the matter of books in danger, here fire, but also metaphorically to begin to wonder and think about books as endangered, and then what becomes of the library.

However, so many of these connections and thoughts are from older minds and places. We shook ourselves to reconsider our seeking. We wanted to understand how libraries are positioned in books for children. But in pursuing this imagination and looking at the collection of Picture Books (PB) we have in the library, it struck us that it may bear more insight in examining how the librarian is depicted in storybooks.  Many of us find the stereotypes around librarians tiring. However many of us also find that our early experience with librarians reinforced the stereotype. We all have met stern, middle-aged, women (more than men) in the library who guard the books. We have also met forbidding rules that are enforced by these stern characters and yet all of us practice a different form of librarianship in our work. Is this because we work with younger children as well? What scenario does the literature reflect and how? We were soon shifting from the library as a place to the librarian in the space as a focus area for our exploration.

In her work on children’s literature Ana Garralón (1996) concludes that the library appears but rarely, which is especially disappointing, since the topics of children’s books are closely related to children’s daily lives and one would hope that the writers would have reflected the evolution and the growing activity of libraries. At Bookworm we actively look for books around libraries, librarians and the act of reading, so we felt we must explore more to see how writers and illustrators are reflecting the active children’s librarian.

We did a few things

1. Identified PBs where the librarian is a human. No anthropomorphised characters.
2. Decided to focus on illustrations.
3. Identified an illustration where the librarian is at the centre of the action in the selected texts.
4. Piloted this selection with the working team at Bookworm.
5. Planned a method of approach in sharing these illustrations with different groups of children.
6. Recorded comments and observations.
7. Extended the exercise by inviting children to illustrate a librarian.
8. Made sense of this experience by writing this essay together.

There are several studies on how librarians are portrayed in children’s literature and how those portrayals may influence a child’s view on libraries and librarians. In 1975, Katherine M. Heylman conducted a content analysis of twenty-five picture books with librarian characters in order to determine whether the stereotypes of negative appearances and behaviors occurred. Heylman found that in most cases the librarians were young, attractive, married, and had an overall kind and positive attitude. This study reported that while twenty-four librarians were female, only one was male (Heylman, 1975). In 2002, Elaine Yontz conducted a study that focused on how the portrayal of librarian stereotypes in children’s literature has changed over time and a lack of diversity in race found among librarian characters was a strong finding. In a study by Peresie and Alexander (2005), most characters in young adult novels published between 1960 and 2004 were white females with negative traits (stern, boring, fat).

Maynard and McKenna (2005) examined how librarian stereotypes and library descriptions vary, based on the age of the intended audience. They found that librarians in PBs were often depicted as kind and helpful but in books for older children the librarian is unfriendly, unpopular yet committed to their work.

We felt driven to do our own content analysis. So from a long list of PBs on libraries and librarians, we identified a set of twelve books and from our very adult gaze of analysis we found the following :

Gender
Of the 12 books, 75% had female representation.  We felt this reflected our real world at Bookworm where we too have an almost 75% representation of females to males. Is it problematic on a larger representation canvas? But, of course!

Ethnicity
In our selection, 50% of the characters were non-white. We recognise that this is better than the findings of Elaine Yontz in 2005, it was still very far from our reality of 100% coloured. Should our readers be seeing more ethnic representation in the library that is familiar and intimate to us?

Appearance and Age
As the study by Peresie and Alexander (2005) indicated that certain depictions tend to stereotype librarians, we looked to see how the librarian was represented in dress and age. Only 3 of the 12 illustrations included spectacles, but almost all of the illustrations of the women (8) had the women in long skirts/ dresses or ‘traditional ethnic dress’ that did not necessarily match our reality. The age of more than 80% of the illustrations showed the librarian as an older person.

Personality and Behaviour
We looked at this in terms of what actions were depicted through the librarians and whom the librarian in the PB was interacting within the image. We found that 10 of the librarians were shown as happy, cheerful persons as found by Maynard and McKenna (2005) and in almost all the illustrations the librarian is engaging with books in the presence of children or directly interacting with children. This does shift the experience our generation has had with librarians and we were glad.

Differences over time
Only one book was from 1988 (Clara and the Book Wagon), the other 11 books were between 2009 – 2011 and in this small sample, we were unable to see any distinctive shift on the role of the librarian across books. They all captured the spirit of book engagement, reaching out to young people and commitment to the library. Is this because these were intended for younger readers and if we closely analysed books for older readers we would find Maynard and McKenna’s findings of sterner stuff?

Genre
We had 4 non-fiction books and additionally 2 hybrid texts of fact fiction. 6 were fictional stories and we felt that when the follow-up exercise by the children of close observation of the illustrations played out, genre hardly mattered but the experience of the children in the library dominated.

We needed to hear what the children had to say. We hold the idea of James Britton which is so elegantly phrased, that reading and writing float on a sea of talk. When children did their own version of content analysis they demonstrated to us that experience is very critical. The experience was either direct – based on what they know from their time in our library sites or from the texts that they were familiar with and had enjoyed and therefore that image of the librarian was preferred. In James Britton’s words, “We cannot afford to underestimate the value of language as a means of organizing and consolidating our accumulated experience, or its value as a means of interacting with people and objects to create an experience…” ( Britton 1983)

We were struck by the details and attention children pay to features of illustrations when called to explain preferences. The illustration from Clara and the Book Wagon, while clearly our most dated text with a very ‘foreign’ representation was found to be very close to experience because books were coming into the community, very much like what Bookworm does and the children experience.  Since we read aloud and have book talks as a part of our library practice, most children interpreted the act of the librarian holding a book as one or the other of these two practices, showing us how the experience continues to drive interpretation. Not one participant found any illustration severe, in fact in the image from Library Lion, there was a conversation about a cat coming into the library (as a parallel to the lion) and how it is but natural that the librarian would be troubled as cats are not allowed. Sensemaking from experience and known information dominated. The most preferred illustration was from The Storyteller’s Candle because the puppets in the hands of the librarian were inviting and familiar.

What we realised across our sites is that the boys tended to prefer the male librarians despite in one site, having very little direct experience with a male library teacher. They held onto the scattering of experiences with a male teacher that could be connected. This emerged even in their own drawings which will follow.

We were reminded about how observant children are of our physical selves and our actions even though so much of this is unconscious to us when we are present in the library. There were similarities drawn between Luis from Biblioburro and Melcom from our team as they both sit on stools. There was a deep sense of familiarity in seeing the librarian from Hands Around the Library in Egypt with our practice as we all sit in a circle on the floor and sometimes there are people wearing veils amongst us. Almost all the images were understood as acts of talking to children about books because this seems to be the unanimous nature of conversations in the library and around children’s experience. The manner in which books are held by various characters was identified by various children as the manner in which either they hold their books or library teachers hold books and such. There was the familiar in these details.

In reflecting on the vocabulary children used to talk about the illustrations on librarians in books we were struck by how the library as a place matters. In one of our sites, due to space constraints the library session moves around the building – sometimes in the lunchroom, sometimes in the dormitory, sometimes in the verandah and on reviewing the conversations from this site, we realise that the library is not mentioned as a place or space. The children of this site, use the word teacher in conversations around the illustrations but not library or librarian. So, this paused us in our work to think about the space for place in helping us frame understanding and identity around the librarian.

When children were asked to draw and illustrate a librarian, this is what we were gifted with :

Our exploration around looking for the library as a place in Picture Books and finding the librarian as a character of enquiry led us to relook at how children/young readers examine the world and the artefacts within it to make sense of experience. We were humbled by the depth of attention and meaning-making that each of them brought to the images and the rich conversations that followed because of direct experience with the library. As Gordon Wells writes in Meaning Makers, “listening to a story …is only part of valuable practice, however. Much of the benefit – as well as of the child’s enjoyment – comes from the talk that accompanies the sharing of the book. Discussing the characters and their actions, predicting what is likely to happen next, clarifying the meaning of particular words and phrases – all these kinds of talk help the child to make connections between the meanings and language forms of the text and his or her actual experiences, including the use of language in other familiar contexts.”

Works used with children

• THE LIBRARIAN FROM THE BLACK LAGOON MIKE THALER, ILLUSTRATED BY JARED LEE

• HANDS AROUND THE LIBRARY SUSAN L ROTH AND KAREN LEGGETT ABOURAYA

• THE LIBRARIAN OF BASRA, JEANNETTE WINTER

• WILD ABOUT BOOKS, JUDY SIERRA, ILLUSTRATED BY MARC BROWN

• WAITING FOR THE BIBLIOBURRO, MONICA BROWN, ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN PARRA

• TOMAS AND THE LIBRARY LADY, PAT MORA, ILLUSTRATED BY RAUL COLON

• CLARA AND THE BOOK WAGON, NANCY SMILER LEVINSON, ILLUSTRATED BY CAROLYN CROLL

• THE STORYTELLER’S CANDLE, LUCIA GONSALEZ, ILLUSTRATED BY LULU DELACRE

• THE FANTASTIC FLYING BOOKS OF MR MORRIS LESSMORE, W.E JOYCE

• BIBLIOBURRO, JEANNETTE WINTER

• LIBRARY LION, MICHELLE KNUDSEN, ILLUSTRATED BY KEVIN HENKES

• MISS MOORE THOUGHT OTHERWISE, JAN PINBOROUGH, ILLUSTRATED BY DEBBY ATWELL

Works cited

• THE NAME OF THE ROSE, UMBERTO ECO

• THE LIBRARY OF BABEL, JORGE LUIS BORGES

• MATILDA, ROALD DAHL AND BLAKE QUENTIN

• THE SHADOW OF THE WIND, ZAFON RUIZ AND GRAVES LUCIA

• THE STRANGE LIBRARY, HARUKI MURAKAMI AND TED GOOSEN

• THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY, AGATHA CHRISTIE

• HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE, J.K ROWLING

• FAHRENHEIT 451, RAY BRADBURY

• ESCAPE FROM LEMONCELLO’S LIBRARY, CHRIS GRABENSTEIN

• THE LIBRARY BOOK, SUSAN ORLEANS

• THE ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA, MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA

References

• BREAGH WIRTH (2017) “LIBRARIAN STEREOTYPES IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: 2001-2015,” SLIS CONNECTING: VOL. 6 : ISS. 2 , ARTICLE 8.

• GARRALÓN, ANA. “LA BIBLIOTECA EN LOS LIBROS INFANTILES Y JUVENILES.” EDUCACIÓN Y BIBLIOTECA 74 (1996): 27-45.

• HEYLMAN, K. M. (1975). LIBRARIANS IN JUVENILE LITERATURE. SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, 21(9), 25-28.

• MAYNARD, S. & MCKENNA, F. (2005). MOTHER GOOSE, SPUD MURPHY, AND THE LIBRARIAN KNIGHTS: REPRESENTATION OF LIBRARIES IN MODERN CHILDREN’S FICTION. JOURNAL OF LIBRARIANSHIP AND INFORMATION SCIENCE, 37(3), 119-129.

• PERESIE, M., & ALEXANDER, L. B. (2005). LIBRARIAN STEREOTYPES IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE. YOUNG ADULT LIBRARY SERVICES, 4(1), 24-31.

• VILARIÑO PICOS, TERESA. “THE LIBRARY AND THE LIBRARIAN AS A THEME IN LITERATURE.” CLCWEB: COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND CULTURE 13.5  (2011)

• YONTZ, E. (2002). LIBRARIANS IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE, 1909-2000. THE REFERENCE LIBRARIAN, 37(78), 85-96.