The Lost Library
by Rebecca Stead &
Wendy Mass
‘ “All of life is a mystery, in a way. And that makes every single one of us a detective.”
… Evan sat there for a few seconds, looking at his desk. He was trying to solve a mystery, he realized: the mystery of the little free library, and why it was full of books from a library that burned down twenty years ago.’
(The Lost Library)
Between them, US writers for young people Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass have won the Newbery Medal, Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the American Library Association Award. They are both New York Times bestselling authors.
The Candymakers by Wendy Mass was one of our go-to books to hand-sell when I was a consultant for Sydney’s premier children’s bookshop.
Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead was in my list of top books for 2015 for the Weekend Australian newspaper, and I reviewed both it and Liar & Spy for the Oz. (Scroll to the end of this post to read my review of Goodbye Stranger.)
The Lost Library is Wendy and Rebecca’s second collaboration.
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The Lost Library
Free tiny community libraries outside people’s houses or in public areas continue to spring up and thrive in Australia. This must also be happening in the US, because this positive phenomenon underpins the plot of the new children’s novel collaboration by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass.
The title suggests that The Lost Library recognises and is affirming of books and libraries, and one of the ideas within the tale – where people put post-it or sticky notes with a brief message on a book they leave in the library – is electric and should be emulated. In the story, a book with the note, “My 100% FAVORITE book of fifth grade” is immediately snapped up by a fourth grader. Personal recommendation of a book is so influential.
Rebecca and Wendy’s The Lost Library is highly engaging, sensitive and full of twists, clues and surprises, and some hidden ingenious mysteries.
The Lost Library is full of kindness.
It should be recommended to all young readers.
(The Lost Library is published by Text Publishing.)
Interview with The Lost Library creators Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass
Thank you for speaking with Joy in Books at Paperbark Words, Rebecca and Wendy.
You have already collaborated on Bob. How did your collaboration there begin? With so many authors in the US, why did you two end up together?
WM: We met well over a decade ago at a writing retreat – one of those blissful places where you get to go and write and be among other people who know how hard that can be, and how rewarding! We were already fans of each other’s books so when we met in person it was an easy friendship. As time passed, we started talking about collaborating.
You have skilfully woven multiple, sophisticated threads into a book that is also easy to read in The Lost Library, quite a feat in a book by one author, let alone two!
Your title The Lost Library is evocative and will attract young readers, as well as librarians and library-and-book-lovers. How is the novel a homage to libraries?
WM: The book shows the importance and life-changing qualities of books and libraries—big and small. The reader gets to see the inner workings of a library and how the absence of one can leave a hole in a town’s heart—and then how the appearance of one can bring a community together.
How have you created a hook or suspense early in the tale to capture readers’ attention?
WM: There are three different genres in the book – a ghost story, an animal story, and a detective story. We put a mystery at the heart of each one that is introduced early on, and it’s not until the end of the book where the three strands come together and the reader (and the characters) finally understand what’s really going on in Martinville.
Your protagonists and narrators are Mortimer the cat; Evan, who is about to finish fifth grade; and ghostly assistant librarian, Al. What characteristic does each regard as their weakest and strongest?
RS: Let’s see . . . Mortimer would probably say that his strength is loyalty and his weakness is communication. Al’s strength, in her own view, might be caring for others, and her weakness is her lack of “invisibility skills”. Evan is a writer, but I’m not sure he would admit that to himself, and he would probably say that he worries too much (although in fact he worries no more than any person).
How is Evan’s best friend Rafe a great foil to him?
RS: Evan and Rafe are a great duo because they really take care of each other. Their situations are different – Evan has a lot more independence than Rafe does (Rafe’s parents actually do worry too much!), but they navigate this with a lot of grace. And Evan knows Rafe’s secret, which is that although he isn’t allowed to cross the street by himself, he is, inside himself, exceptionally brave.
When planning his own mystery story, Evan completes an outline that readers may also be able to use in their own writing. He includes Setting, Tone, Protagonist, Antagonist, Supporting Characters, Crime, Motive, Victim, Suspects and Clues.
The tone of Evan’s story is “Not scary” because he doesn’t enjoy scary stories. How would you describe the ‘tone’ of The Lost Library’?
RS: Not scary! The Lost Library is a book of surprises, but not frightening ones. It’s also a book about books – how they work (see: the terms you’ve helpfully listed above), but also what books have to offer readers, and how they can change us. From the beginning, we knew we wanted to write a story that drew upon, explored, and celebrated the experience of reading.
Your portrayal of Evan’s teacher is fair and positive. What do you see as the 3 greatest attributes of a schoolteacher or teacher-librarian?
WM: Passion for what they do, which is contagious. Compassion for their young students/readers and their needs and situations. Creativity, to keep the student interested and open-minded to trying new things.
Mr Brock lives with Al and Ms Scoggin, the ghost librarian. He loves reading and admires and advocates courage. What is the unnamed book he is enraptured with that has a heroic dog, a mountain and three brave young men?
RS: Mr. Brock isn’t reading any actual book I know. (maybe Wendy will write it later?) Meanwhile, I think Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain books, starting with The Book of Three, capture the kind of adventure and heart that I think Mr. Brock appreciates.
[JL I loved that series.]
The library held Book Club Wednesdays. The members were “Great Readers” and they enjoyed listening to each other talk about the books they were reading and how they made them feel:
“Being a Great Reader has nothing to do with reading great sophisticated books, or reading great long books, or even with reading a great many books.
Being a Great Reader means feeling something about books.”
It is significant that you have highlighted ‘feeling’ as the mark of a Great Reader. Could you please give an example of when a feeling or felt response to one of your books by a reader has left a great impact on you?
Any response from any reader feels pretty great. One thing I find incredibly moving is hearing from people in their late teens or twenties who read one of my books in elementary school and want to talk about it ten years later. They might be packing for college and suddenly decide to get in touch to say that they’ve thought about one of my stories – it’s usually When You Reach Me – for a long time. That’s the way I feel about certain books, like I carry them with me as I go through the stages of life, so it means a whole lot.
WM: I’d say it’s when a reader tells you a book made them feel understood—this usually happens with my first book, A Mango-Shaped Space, because the condition the main character has—synesthesia—can really stand in for any condition where a child feels “different” and has to overcome that.
Please tell us something about your other collaboration, Bob, or about any of your other books already published or upcoming.
WM: The little free library at the end of Bob was in our minds when we sat down to write something new together. So in that way we take a little piece of Bob with us into The Lost Library. My next book is called Life is Sweet, and it’s a prequel to a book called The Candymakers. It’s a graphic novel so it’s in the art-stage now.
RS: I’m at the beginning of a new novel, too early to say what it’s about. And I have a picture book in the pipeline (first one!), but it probably won’t be out in the world for another year and a half.
Thank you so much for the time, energy and great questions, Joy!
“We read to know we are not alone. – C.S. Lewis”
The Lost Library at Text Publishing
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My review of Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead (bolded) in the Weekend Australian newspaper (behind the paywall but generally inaccessible now) follow.
I have reproduced the whole multiple book review. Scroll through to read
YA fiction: Fiona Wood, Rosanne Hawke, Julie Murphy, Rebecca Stead
- By JOY LAWN
- 12:00AM JANUARY 23, 2016
- WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
True perception of self and others is a work in progress throughout young adulthood. Identity, image and self-awareness shape confidence. Confidence may be genuine or feigned. The assertive boy may feel hollow inside; the quiet girl may be unexpectedly resilient.
Melbourne-based scriptwriter Fiona Wood crafts achingly real characters: vulnerable, reserved, loud. Her three novels for young adults, Six Impossible Things, Wildlife and Cloudwish (Pan Macmillan, 288pp, $19.99) emulate reality through the unfolding personalities and rhythms of the characters’ lives.
Sibylla and Lou, major characters in Wood’s earlier work, reappear in Cloudwish as concerned potential friends of Vietnamese-Australian scholarship girl Van Uoc Phan. Van Uoc tries to keep a low profile but she daydreams about “hot dickhead” Billy Gardiner who only goes out with “foreground, high-resolution girls”. When she makes a wish on an elusive glass vial that Billy would find her “fascinating”, her fantasy seems to come true.
The style is contemporary realism, but it is realism with a slice of surrealism and imperceptible magic. When Van Uoc’s clothes aren’t warm enough she finds a cardigan with rainbow-coloured wing-petals, as if from a fairytale, in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. Narrative tension stems from Van Uoc’s doubts about the cause of Billy’s interest. “She felt the tangle of sex and longing and fairytales with handsome boys and happy endings. She was peering into the well, ready to tumble in, and what then? These stories with enchantments and wishes weren’t her stories. She was smarter than that. She was nobody’s Cinderella.”
“Cloudwish” is also the ethereal meaning of Van Uoc’s name. Although a successful student and photographer, she prefers to be invisible at school and “the shape of not fitting in was almost comfortably familiar”. However her inner resolve and love of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre give her enough confidence to challenge injustice and constantly ask herself, “What would Jane do?”
Van Uoc feels set apart from the non-Asian scholarship kids and vents her anger against disempowerment of women and racist views on boatpeople, asylum-seekers and minority groups in free writing she then usually deletes.
Aster is given a Free Writing book to write her story from inside a Pakistani jail in The Truth About Peacock Blue (Allen & Unwin, 272pp, $15.99), the 24th book by award-winning South Australian writer Rosanne Hawke. Hawke writes with authority and balance. She clearly loves Pakistan, where she has lived as an aid worker.
The Truth About Peacock Blue is based on a true story and also integrates the stories of Malala and Asia Bibi, a Pakistani woman on death row. It alludes to To Kill a Mockingbird, which “did more to change attitudes about race than any other work of art in the 20th century”. The defenceless mockingbird symbolises the incarcerated children and victims of prejudice.
Fourteen-year-old Aster is the first girl from her village to attend high school but, as a representative of the minority Christian group, she is accused of blasphemy by her teacher of Arabic and Islamiyat. There is no proof because her exam paper disappeared but she is bundled off to a grim jail without even a shawl to cover herself when she uses the shared toilet hole. Christians are not the only religious group to be persecuted under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Muslims are also often falsely accused.
The extroverted Aster loses her confidence and becomes silent to minimise the abuse she experiences in jail. Her family and village are threatened and men march to see her hanged. Even though 68 per cent of Pakistanis believe the blasphemy laws should be repealed, the death penalty for children still exists and 1400 children languish in Pakistani jails. Aster writes, “I pray for a world where we are allowed to believe what we wish without fear, where we respect others’ faiths and choices and don’t kill them if they are different. I pray for a world where I can be free …”
Maryam, Aster’s Pakistani-Australian cousin, uses her blog to petition for Aster’s release. She campaigns about freedom, human rights and religious tolerance and reminds her readers that almost 1000 children are in Australian detention centres. Different voices share their opinions, embodying Australia’s free speech. Maryam urges that empathy, respect and kindness can enable individuals to make peaceful change “step by step”.
Willowdean Dickson in Texan author Julie Murphy’s Dumplin’ (Penguin, 384pp, $17.99) is another strong, vocal character who makes things happen. Her mother won and now runs the local beauty pageant and nicknames Willowdean Dumplin’ because she is “fat”. Willowdean decides to enter the pageant with three other girls who are not conventionally beautiful. Millie is extra big and wears a polyester pantsuit; Amanda is brusque, has one short leg and wears soccer shorts; and Hannah is a “half Dominican lesbian with buckteeth”. These girls aspire to a prize they’re not supposed to have, taking Aunt Lucy’s advice to do something special. Dumplin’ gives confidence and joy to everyone, not just big girls.
Hot former private-school jock Bo works with Willowdean at Harpy’s Burgers and Dogs. He initiates a secret relationship with Willowdean but it seems like “all action and no definition”. She is happy to kiss him but shrinks when he might feel the fat on her waist or back. Even when Bo is ready to make the relationship public Willowdean can’t bear to be “one half of the couple who everyone stares at and asks, How did she get him?”
Willowdean and her friend Ellen love the Texan music star Dolly Parton, but their friendship is disintegrating and Will realises that she’s been playing pretend. Parton’s famous song Jolene reminds her that “no matter who you are, there will always be someone prettier or smarter or thinner” so “find out who you are and do it on purpose”.
Bridget, the protagonist of Rebecca Stead’s Goodbye Stranger (Text Publishing, 304pp, $16.99) muses, “Sometimes your body feels like a cage for all the stuff inside. You paint your nails, braid your hair, and buy the right kind of jeans, but none of it is really about you.’’ New Yorker Stead, Murphy and other authors raise issues of body image to dismantle preconceptions about its value in forming identity.
When Bridget was young she was hit by a car. People tell her that she has been put on earth for a reason but an accident like this precipitates change and she starts calling herself Bridge and wearing cat ears. Her friends seem to be moving ahead. “Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side”.
Her friend Emily shares increasingly explicit photos of herself with an older boy and this raises the double standard of blame for girls only. Stead balances this with two positive male characters, Bridge’s brother Jamie and friend Sherm.
As always, Stead’s writing is innovative. A series of chapters called Valentine’s Day is written in second person from the viewpoint of an unnamed narrator. This character, as well as Bridge and the other protagonists in these novels, grasp that true identity may need time, understanding and honesty to be uncovered.
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