Dear Librarian,
I was a lonely kid until third grade, when I picked up the Wishbone retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Reading, I realized, made me feel less alone and more adventurous for a couple of hours. (But also, let’s be real: I thought Wishbone was hot with the rose in his mouth.)
After that, my parents let me choose two books from Books-a-Million every Friday. I often finished them by Saturday evening and begged for more. Faced with an increasingly expensive hobby, my parents introduced me to the Lakeland Public Library. I checked out two armloads of books weekly and lost myself in them every day. My struggles seemed manageable compared to the Gray Death in The Two Princesses of Bamarre or Slappy in Night of the Living Dummy.
That’s not to say the library has always been good for me. After a librarian recommended Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small series, my math grade dipped to a D. As the teacher explained to my shocked mom, I was reading books under my desk during lessons. (That meeting scared me into paying attention; I earned an A by the end of the year.)
The library also aided and abetted my above-age reading habits. When I was in the seventh grade, my mom offhandedly recommended Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor—if you know, you know—and I started wolfing down historical romance novels. My dad noticed and began reviewing my books for age-appropriateness before checkout. He did not, however, review my best friend Keidra’s stack. She sandwiched my romance novels between her own books and smuggled them out, handing them off to me later. I thought we got away with it until recently. My dad admitted he clocked her expanding book stack, but figured I deserved to read the forbidden books since we went to all that effort.
Today, the library is still my go-to third space, and I’m excited that my debut novel, The House Built on Alligator Bones, might be in yours. I hope your patrons lose themselves in my swampy, romantic, Southern Gothic version of Florida. I hope they sympathize with my narrator, Dart, and her deep-seated mommy issues. I hope they recognize a loved one in sweet Aunt Virginia. I hope they feel more confident about tackling their problems when comparing them to Gazzie, Dart’s monstrous grandmother. I hope they enjoy making up their own stories about Ironheart, the mythical alligator, and its arch-nemesis Ida, the ghostly Victorian matriarch.
Most of all, I hope your patrons are inspired to read other Southern Gothic books in your collection, from The Reformatory to Blackwater and beyond. That’s the best thing about libraries—the way just one book opens up an entire other world.
Thank you for everything!
Love,
Sophia
P.S. I can’t miss this opportunity to rave about the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Y’all coordinate a shocking number of holds for me, painstakingly help me print manuscript drafts, and approve all the visual art how-to books I request. I can sketch some of my fictional settings, thanks to you!
To my beloved Whetstone branch: I swear I’m working on picking up my holds on time. Please forgive me.
