Hello! I am Frances Hardinge, and unlike many of you, I am not a school librarian.
I am a writer of dark fantasy fiction for children and young adults. I have found a delightful loophole in the rules for adulthood, where I am being paid to live permanently in the Neverlands of my own brain, instead of doing a grown up job. I remain uncertain how I have managed this.
The irony of me talking to all of you about school libraries is not lost on me. Unlike many of you, I don’t have first-hand knowledge of how to run a library, engage an ever-changing mass of students, maintain an atmosphere of simultaneous calm and excitement, keep on top of the latest releases and manage the daily logistics. You know more about the threats and challenges facing school libraries than I do. You will know more about the impact studies demonstrating their benefits than I do. I am not an expert on school libraries. I am just one of their countless beneficiaries.
This will therefore be an entirely personal and subjective talk about school libraries, the joy they have given me, and the happiness that I’ve seen them bring to so many others.
You will be unsurprised to hear that, even when I was a small and very mousy child, I was always neck-deep in books. As a baby I was late for being born, and there was a family joke that I must have got caught up in a good book and forgotten about the time.
Looking back, I was incredibly privileged when it came to reading matter. Even when my sister and I were babies, we were given cloth books to chew. Our family home was full of books, with shelves reaching up to the ceiling, some of them only accessible by ladder. These weren’t fiercely policed, and part of the joy of my reading journey was exploring and getting to choose what I would read next.
Back then, I thought this was normal. I know now that it was not, is not, has never been so. Many, many people did not have that luxury of choice in their own homes, and could only find it in a library.
But even in my case – little book-spoilt so-and-so that I was – even I was excited by the fact that in the school library I could explore completely unmapped territory. I could find books that the rest of my family might not like! I still remember a collection of horror short stories that opened windows in my head onto dark skies with unfamiliar stars. I have never found that book again since, but I still remember the stories vividly. The doomed spaceship crew infected by maddening parasitic wasps. The young siblings growing sixth fingers as they are slowly possessed by the children of a long-dead witch. The boy who makes a voodoo doll of his teacher and regrets it far too late.
I think I was nine or ten when I read those stories. Was I ready for them? Well, that is a very interesting question. Did they frighten and disturb me? Yes, yes they did. Did they give me nightmares? The wasp story certainly did. Was I sorry to have read them? That is a resounding no. They scared the dickens out of me, but that was part of the point. They were my adventure. My private adventure.
That collection also helped to introduce me to the strange joy of reading discomfort. I was pushing into unnerving territory where I couldn’t be sure that the book in my hands would be kind, easy or safe. And that was exciting. It felt like taking one’s first steps without a supporting hand.
So what were they like, the school libraries I encountered as a child?
I have a confession to make – my spatial memory is rubbish, as anybody who has suffered my attempts at navigation can testify. I know that the library in my tiny primary school was just a corner of the main room. The libraries in my secondary schools were bigger, but I don’t remember how they were laid out or decorated.
But I do remember what I did, thought and felt there. I remember making little makeshift pop-up cards in the primary school library while waiting to be picked up by my mum. I remember feeling safer from bullies in the library of my first secondary school. In the library of my last school I remember fretting over my revision, and drawing a cartoon of myself being squished by huge books bearing the names of my A Level subjects.
Most of my memories of my school career are a indistinct, crashing sea of repetition and stress-fuelled haste. Those quiet little moments in the library have stayed with me, however, like calm little rafts amid the tempest. Why are they still so clear? Perhaps it’s because these were moments where I could step out of the onslaught, clear my head and catch my breath.
As all of you already know, libraries are not just about the books. A school needs a library in the same way cities need green spaces. A library is a place where people can untangle their heads, unclench, explore, rest, pause and find the current of their own thoughts again. It’s also a space where things can grow.
Since becoming a professional author, I have visited a lot of libraries, nearly all of them school libraries.
When I visit a school, I’m usually met at reception by the school librarian. Quite often it’s the librarian who is responsible for me being there at all. They will have pushed for the invitation in their cheerfully relentless way, until somehow enough was squeezed out of the school budget. But you already knew that, didn’t you?
“Shall I show you the library?” they ask. “Do you want to go there first?”
“Yes!” I say, quite honestly. “Yes, please!”
This is not a very scientific comment, but when I enter a school library I am often struck by how beautiful they are. They are virtually always awash with colour, vivid display stands, student artwork, banners, posters and books with gorgeous covers turned face out. Sometimes it’s a bit like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when the film suddenly goes into colour.
As an author, there is nothing better than walking into a library and coming across a board covered with images or pieces of text created by the students to welcome me (again, usually at the instigation of the librarian). I would take that over a professional poster any day.
On one occasion I was confronted by a large, hand-illustrated cutout of a heron, a reference to one of my books. When I enthused about it, the librarian gave me a slightly furtive smile and admitted that she might have got a little carried away.
Sometimes, the library is our base of operations, and has to be closed so the librarian can look after me. A ‘no entry’ sign is put up on the door, and promptly ignored by an absolute stream of students who try to enter. I always feel guilty about it, but at the same time there’s something rather heartening about the chorus of disappointed noises. Anybody who says that students have no need for libraries should spend half an hour observing the effort required to keep them out of one.
“But we’re allowed in, aren’t we?” ask some of the students. And I realise that it’s incomprehensible to them that they might not be let in, because the library is their place.
These are the students like younger me, the ones who thrive in the peace and find it easier to breathe air that books have breathed first. In the library, sometimes little gaggles of these quieter kids find each other and their own voices. Their shells and invisibility cloaks are put aside, and their personalities emerge… because in the library it’s safe.
I also hear about all the library-based clubs, of course – those organised by the librarian or by other members of staff, and those that have sprouted like mushrooms.
‘Oh, I didn’t set up the D&D group!’ the librarian will tell me. ‘Or the poetry club, the manga club, the creative writing club. That was all the students’ doing! I just provided the space!”
And I always want to say… yes. Yes, you did. You provided the space. Clubs like this don’t appear in just any old space. They come into being in places where they know they are safe and welcome.
Providing the space is non-trivial. A library has to be cultivated just like a garden or a park. Its restfulness and serenity takes energy and industry.
You can see the care and thought in every detail. The little conversational henges of beanbags, inviting people to sit and talk. Secluded nooks and corners. Brightly coloured displays and thought-provoking posters. Book reviews from students attached to shelves.
You might even catch sight of the librarian, if they stay still for a moment. Most of the time, however, they will be a whirl of activity, setting things in order, arranging theatre trips, organising Cluedo-themed games, and above all dealing with people.
Even in the twenty-first century, some people still harbour cliched ideas of the hushed and hushing, reserved librarian, possibly in severe spectacles and very sensible shoes. I do not believe I have ever met this person, not even once. Instead I have had the delight of encountering a parade of energetic, enthusiastic book magicians, each with enough warm-hearted force of will to power a turbine.
I have met the librarian who had started her job to find that her library was a mountain of boxes of uncatalogued books that had been exiled from another building. A year later everything was catalogued and shelved, and she had still found time to create Narnia. This was a tiny book-reading retreat behind hanging coats, set-dressed appropriately, with a projected video scene of a snow-flurried Narnia lamppost projected onto the wall as a background.
I have met the librarian who had been told to take time off after critical treatment in hospital, and yet somehow was still there engaged in her duties, including looking after me.
I have met the librarians in struggling schools sourcing books on a minimal budget, with a tenacity and ingenuity that in a better world they would never have to demonstrate.
And of course I have met the many librarians that are integral to the glorious multi-school book awards, where students of collaborating schools read a shortlist of books, write reviews, produce creative projects, and finally vote on the winner. The award ceremonies – in which the students’ reviews and creative projects get as much recognition as the shortlisted books – are always a delight. With my adult head on, they’re a truly fantastic way of encouraging student engagement. With my less adult head… well, I may have been spotted bouncing up and down with unrestrained glee while photographing the student reviews and creative projects based on my work. They’re usually brilliant, and I have, as the saying goes, no chill about it at all.
For the last couple of years, I have been lucky enough to attend a different award ceremony – that of the Pupil Library Assistant of the Year, in which of course the SLA plays a critical role. Some of you may well have attended such ceremonies.
I probably don’t need to say how wonderful it is to see credit being given to these students, not for scoring a goal or heading a team, but for quietly dedicating many hours to making their fellow students’ lives better. Many congratulations are due to this year’s winner Kotryna Kazlauskaite, but all the finalists had clearly been supporting their librarians and everyone else with warmth, diligence and ingenuity. (The library loyalty card with rewards of chocolate was a particularly fine idea.)
The previous winner, Megan Urmston gave a presentation to show what she had achieved with her prize money – a sensory-reduced Zen room to which students could retreat to decompress when overwhelmed by school life. It even came with a comforting stuffed axolotl! Furthermore, she had somehow managed to make the money stretch to a second project, a school radio station. Typical librarian – give them an inch, and they’ll somehow squeeze multiple inspiring projects into it.
None of this year’s pupil librarians were obliged to give a presentation, but one of them had asked to be allowed to do so. Reuben Colton had been given a special commendation for his outstanding efforts at primary. He was therefore much younger than the other finalists, and on the stage looked about three feet tall. He was not, however, daunted in the slightest.
He led in by telling us, in ringing tones, that one in seven state schools didn’t have a library, before declaring, “and I’m going to change that!” The ripple of laughter in the audience was reflexive – he’d caught us off guard. But the laughter certainly wasn’t mocking or even incredulous. Faced with his diamond-hard conviction, I don’t think any of us doubted him for a moment.
Reuben had been busy. He’d founded a charitable initiative called Blooms for Books, selling packets of sunflower seeds in order to raise money to buy books for state school libraries. Reuben had PowerPoint slides. Quite a lot of slides. After the ceremony, when he passed along the line of authors, accepting signed copies of our books, he asked me to dedicate my book to one of the schools his fundraising had supplied, instead of to him. It dawned on me that, as far as he was concerned, even this ceremony was just another opportunity to further his mission – the all-important mission of putting books into the hands of those who lacked them and might love them.
I left the award ceremony with a packet of sunflower seeds, and a vague desire to vote Reuben into office somehow. On second thoughts, though, I don’t feel that I should be diverting him from his chosen course. Libraries are too often under siege, belittled or underestimated, falling prey to cuts and false economies. Our embattled libraries would be lost without their frontline troops, their soldiers of every age – their army of hardworking, enthusiastic book magicians with enough warm-hearted force of will to power a turbine.