In 1971 Marguerite Hart, a children’s librarian in the city of Troy, Michigan, asked public figures to write to local children about why their new library was important. She wrote wide and dreamed big, sending requests all over the world to artists, writers, politicians – even pontiffs – and what came back was a veritable who’s-who in history: Dr Seuss, Pope Paul VI, Neil Armstrong, Kingsley Amis and Isaac Asimov responded, to name but a few of the 97.
45 years later and half a world away, the letters were noticed by the Arts Council England this year, who contacted the Troy Public Library about doing something similar to mark National Libraries Day in the UK. “They were thrilled to bits” according to Brian Ashley, director of libraries at ACE, which immediately contacted writers and personalities for their library memories. “They may look different now to then, and there may be different numbers of them going forward, but the idea and importance of libraries remains the same.”
Ann Cleeves, crime writer and National Libraries Day ambassador for 2016
Forget everything you think you know about libraries. They’re not boring, you don’t have to be quiet and they’re nothing like school. Imagine a library instead as Dr Who’s Tardis. The books there can take you back in time or hurtle you into the future. They can answer your questions about dinosaurs or outer space. And every library is full of stories. Stories that are jam-packed with magic so you can escape into them or are so real that you can imagine they’re describing your life. Stories that are so scary that it takes all your courage to read on and stories so funny that they make you laugh until you wee your pants. Not everyone can be Doctor Who’s assistant but everyone can join a library. Why not give it a go?
Cerys Matthews, musician and radio presenter
Next time that devil on your shoulder yells “I’m bored”, take it for a walk to the library. Make it sit comfortably and then blow its mind with some crazy stuff. From squid monsters to blubber fish, horse-carrying girls to war horses, tarantulas, space walkers, iron men and pig farms. And the best thing of all? It’s free, which makes it one hell of a deal with the devil.
Nadiya Hussain, chef, columnist and winner of the BBC’s The Great British Bake Off
Dear Children of Britain,
No tablet, television, laptop or game console can give you what your mind already has. Imagination!
Pick up that book, read the words and let your imagination take you where no electrical device can ever go.
Love books, love reading and indulge your mind.
Nadiya
Robin Ince, comedian, actor and writer
My first memory of a library was the mobile library that came to our village on a Friday morning. There was something exotic and bizarre about a large van filled with books on shelves. The slight wobble as you placed your foot on the first step to get inside something which, like a first draft Tardis, seemed bigger on the inside.
A van of so many ideas and possible adventures.
When I go back to the local library of my childhood, it doesn’t seem so big now, but when I was eight, it seemed like a book-bound cathedral.
The Making of Doctor Who was the first book I had to order. Hitching library had a copy and the library service sent a request stating that there was a boy in Chorleywood eager to know more about Silurians and Seeds of Doom. Back then, four books was the limit. How hard to limit it to just four. And then looking at the date stamps, one book hadn’t been taken out since 1973 (it was 1977) It seemed historical.
The inky stamps are gone now and my son is not limited to four. We place the books in a machine that seems futuristic to us both, and through chips and technology, the machine knows the books we are taking out, the start of the robot adventure starts before we even open a robot adventure book.
The library houses thousands of imaginations, thoughts of the living and the dead. A good day in the library means you see the world differently when you depart. Maybe you understand the twinkling of the stars, the falling of objects to earth or what it takes to be an astronaut, or you’ve battled a dragon or discovered just how stinky the stinky past could be in a horrible history. This can be a place where we are made.
Meg Rosoff, author of How I Live Now
To Whom It May Concern:
Welcome to the library
where
no one will tell you what to read
or tell you what to think.
No one will bother you
Or bully you.
No one will require a report;
you don’t have to revise.
You can spy
Draw a picture.
Or sleep.
You can write.
Or wander.
Ask advice
ask for help
think anything
everything
or nothing at all.
No one will stop you.
No one will even try.
Meanwhile
a book
over there
on a shelf
will be glancing at you sideways
getting up the courage to
ask you out
make you laugh
make you cry
make you fall in love.
I’m trying to write a book like that now.
In a library.
Love,
Me
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