Naomi Novik, author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Temeraire novels, has already captured the hearts of many librarians with her upcoming novel, UPROOTED. Grounded in folk stories and legends, this dark fairy tale for the modern age was voted the #1 LibraryReads pick for May!
Ms. Novik is just as passionate about libraries and librarians as they are about her books:
My childhood library was Shelter Rock Public Library. Libraries have always been places of shelter to me, for the imagination and for the spirit. I was the child of immigrants who didn’t have a stock of favorite English-language books and stories from their own childhood to hand on, so it was to the library that I turned, out of voracious necessity, to find my own reading.
There are books in me that are nameless, I was so young when I took them out, but scattered pieces still linger — a skeletal horse in a green field, outdated names of dinosaurs, leaves crumpling in an autumn poem. I found Tolkien on my mother’s shelf, but it was in the library that I met Tamora Pierce’s Alanna and John Christopher’s Tripods, Laura Ingalls Wilder and all the sequels to Anne of Green Gables — I still remember that moment of transporting delight, realizing there was more. As a classic geeky introvert teen, I found shelter there from my own awkwardness, and the sense of wonder and discovery that remains for me the heart of all speculative fiction.
My daughter has had her own NYPL card since the age of three. When she was even smaller, we would go to the St. Agnes library with friends and she would spend the time intently stacking the round cushions in the children’s reading area while I gathered up as many books as I could stuff into the stroller basket, knowing that she would ask for “a new book” ten times a day if she could. And though I do have a collection of beloved books to pass on to her, gathered over many years, and I can’t wait to share them with her, it was a proud day for me when she first came home from preschool with a library book she had chosen out herself.”
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And, as OUR salute to libraries this National Library Week,
we’re offering a complete collection of our 2015 LibraryReads Titles to 10 lucky libraries.
Click to enter your library for a chance to win!