librarians Archives – Lisa Scottoline

By Lisa Scottoline

I’m getting ready to launch THE UNRAVELING OF JULIA on book tour, so I’ll be running Classic Columns for a month.

Details about my signings are on my website, and I hope you’ll come see me on the road! Thanks so much for the love and support! I’m grateful for each and every one of you!

It’s everybody’s favorite time of year again.

My birthday!

That’s how I feel about my birthday, and that’s how I feel about yours, too.

I celebrate your birthday in my head, so I hope you’re celebrating mine your head.

It’s cheaper that way.

Also we don’t get drunk.

Well, maybe I do.

But this birthday felt different to me, in a good way.

I feel super happy just to be alive.

Let’s pause a moment.

I know that sounds kind of Splenda, but it’s really true. And the fact is, absolutely nothing has changed from last year.

In fact that’s exactly what is making me happy.

It really is a good thing to be grateful sometimes that you’re still living.

I get constant reminders of this, and I had one just this weekend, with Francesca. We were scheduled to give a speech about our collections of funny stories like these, the newest of which is out this July 11, entitled I NEED A LIFEGUARD EVERYWHERE BUT THE POOL.

Actually I need a lifeguard at the pool, too.

But that’s another story.

Literally.

Anyway we were supposed to speak at the American Library Association conference in Chicago, and we were both excited because we love librarians.

Hug your librarian the next time you see him or her.

They don’t get enough hugs.

Nobody does.

See what I mean?

Splenda!

Anyway, when I go on a business trip, I fly out, do my gig, and fly right back. I don’t do anything other than the gig, because it’s business.

But Francesca had a different idea. “Mom, I’ve never been to Chicago,” she said. “Why don’t we go sightseeing and leave later that night?”

I rolled my eyes. Inwardly.

Don’t roll your eyes outwardly if you’re a mother.

You’ll get in a lot of trouble.

But I said yes, and Francesca went online, researching the things you could do in Chicago, which I heard about with an inward eyeroll.

Because I didn’t think you were supposed to have fun on a business trip.

And before I knew it, we were in Chicago, we did our gig, talked about our book, and gave a lot of hugs, then we woke up the next day, ready for tourist fun in the sun.

What did we do?

We saw the cool bean statue at Millennium Park.

Cool beans!

And we went to the gorgeous Buckingham Fountain, which is next to a body of water they say is a lake but anybody from Philly would call an ocean.

But the best thing we did was take a boat ride with a billion other tourists down the Chicago River, with a volunteer telling us the architectural history of the skyscrapers.

Inward eyeroll?

Same here, but I was wrong.

It was awesome.

Because this amazing volunteer knew everything about architecture and gave us almost two hours of her time simply because she loves architecture and her city.

And because we learned everything about the brilliant architects and engineers who imagined and then built a slew of incredible buildings, each of them a tribute to human ingenuity and hard work.

And even because people on the bank waved to our boat as we floated by, and Francesca and I waved back, even though we had no idea who they were, or they us.

In fact, we waved at people on the riverbanks the whole damn boat trip, and people on the riverbanks waved back, and that made Francesca and I tear up, unaccountably.

Okay, accountably, since we’re Italian-American.

We cry all the time.

That’s how you know we’re happy.

The boat trip was a reminder of the simple truth that we’re all just human beings, floating down some river, waving at each other as we go by.

And when I thought of the architects, the engineers, the volunteers, and the librarians, I felt awed by all of us, just normal people, filled with so much vision and heart, following whichever endeavor we choose, our passion or our job and sometimes both. With just ourselves, we build communities, cities, and even countries.

Like this one.

And by the end of the day, I remembered I was happy to be alive.

You probably already know this lesson, but in my life, I need to teach it to myself from time to time.

Which is to go slower.

Enjoy yourself.

Feel the sun on your face.

Wave.

And do really touristy things, because there’s a reason so many people like to do the same things, wherever they go.

Because people are basically the same, everywhere you go.

We’re all tourists in this life, aren’t we?

None of us is from here.

And none of us is staying.

And so my biggest birthday present was that I got another year on my trip.

I pray that will be your present, too.

Happy birthday to us.

And of course, to America.

By Lisa Scottoline

Do you know who Dillon Helbig is?

Well, I’ll tell you.

Because I’m betting that one day his will be a household name.

Dillon is a second-grader in Idaho who loves to make up stories. One day he wrote one down and titled it The Adventures of Dylan Helbig’s Crismis. It was eighty-one pages, and he made a cover and illustrated it himself. Underneath the title he wrote, By Dillon His Self.

I love this kid.

But it gets better.

So then, on his next trip to the library with his grandmother, unbeknownst to anyone, Dillon slipped his book onto the shelf in the children’s section. What happened next is that the librarians discovered the book, read it, decided it meets their selection criteria, and added it to the library’s collection. Everybody who reads it loves it, and now there’s a long wait list to check it out. Not only that, the library awarded Dillon its first-ever Whoodini Award for Best Young Novelist.

I love everything about this story. I love that Dillon loves books, loves the library, and doesn’t always follow the rules. I love librarians for myriad reasons, and this story illustrates all of them, but mainly because they love books, love the library, and don’t always follow the rules.

Dylan is reportedly working on a sequel to his book, which will involve his dog Rusty.

This kid is a genius.

His marketing instincts are unerring.

Dogs always work in books.

If I didn’t have a dog named Rusty, I would say I did.

Rusty!

Dillon’s next book idea is reportedly about a closet that eats clothes.

Honestly, that’s the best book idea ever.

This kid is the master.

I mean, he wrote a book and put it on the library shelf.

He wanted his book in the library.

Who doesn’t?

I lived in the library when I was younger, and I used to dream of having my books in the library.

I should add that this story about Dillon appeared in The Washington Post, to which I digitally subscribe, and the piece was written by Kellie B. Gormly. If you want to know more details, you should read it there because it will make you feel really good.

The story is all the more remarkable when you realize it happened in the same week that books are being taken off library shelves.

Because you may have read that a school district in Tennessee banned the graphic novel Maus, effectively taking it off its school library shelves, even though the book won a Pulitzer. Maus is about the Holocaust and is written by Art Spiegelman, the son of a Holocaust survivor, and is based on his father’s stories. In the novel, the victims are mice and the Nazis are cats.

The Tennessee school board gave some reason for banning the book, but I’m not going to repeat them because there’s no good reason to take Maus off the shelf in any library.

Especially at a time when people are waving Nazi flags from overpasses in Orlando.

The United States Holocaust Museum said that Maus played “a vital role” in Holocaust education. And by the way, the Tennessee school district took this action the same week as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

I’m guessing they forgot.

It’s ironic that a child’s instinct is to put a book on the shelf, but at the same time adults who lack his wisdom take books off.

It hit home for me because my novel Eternal comes out in paperback this week, and it’s about many things, among them the Holocaust in Italy. I wrote the book for many reasons, among them that I want people to know what happened during Fascism and Nazism, in the very heart of Rome. I’m proud I wrote the book, proud it’s been so well-received, and proud it’s on a library shelf, where it belongs.

And it better stay there, or I’m going to get very South Philly on somebody’s tushie.

What we need in this country is more books, not fewer.

What we need in this country is more education, not less.

What we need in this country is great big thinkers like a little kid.

Column Classic: Love Boat

In Praise of Dillon Helbig

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