It’s the Librarian’s Fault! How the public library violently made me fall in love with reading and become a writer, a guest post by Hemant Nayak
Well, maybe that should read—made me fall violently in love with reading and become a writer, but it sounds more fun the other way.
When I was a kid, I would walk to the public library in Milwaukee on Villard Avenue all by myself and look at books. In my mind it was a one mile walk and I just google-mapped the distance this very moment and it actually says it is 1.0 miles! My childhood memory was right! I wandered through the streets of the city by myself, past McDonalds and Wilburt’s bakery with its heavenly frosted raisin bread, to the ultimate destination.
I adored the kids section on the left when I was small and would get all kinds of books there from fantasy to origami (I still remember how to make an origami blow-up paper balloon that actually blows up and pulled this trick in a meeting once – thank you library!) When I was bigger, I would go right into the adult fiction stacks and on the weekends I would go into the meeting room and play Dungeons & Dragons with my buddies from three different high schools. I grew up with and in the library.
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I was born in India but was a baby when we flew over. If you take an immigrant kid and give them unlimited library resources, make them fall in love with reading fantasy, and teach them that anything’s possible—they’re going to write stories about magic in other countries and stories involving tight immigrant families and struggles with classes and colonialism and all kinds of craziness. IT’S THE LIBRARIAN’S FAULT!
Every Saturday morning, I’d sit and watch cartoons, of course, but first, our librarian would come on Milwaukee Public T.V. every Saturday!!! EVERY SATURDAY and it was MY LIBRARIAN FROM THE LITTLE VILLARD PUBLIC LIBRARY!!! She would read stories and talk about her favorite kid books—heaven. IT’S THE LIBRARIAN’S FAULT! One of my favorite writers was and still is the amazing Daniel Pinkwater, whose book Alan Mendehlson, the Boy From Mars, is a true literary masterpiece and deserves to be read by all generations and a Nobel Prize or the equivalent. I wrote to Daniel when I grew up and he responded and continues to do so whenever I drop him a line. Pure magic and once again the librarians did it.
I’d come home from school and rush to my basement and pound out a story on our old typewriter about the kids on the bus and them taking over the bus and riding it through the city on a rampage. Then I’d hand out the copies to the kids on the bus when I got on so they could read about their latest adventure and see if they survived. My writing a YA Fantasy with Simon & Schuster was a natural extension of this. THOSE LIBRARIANS DID IT!
I wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life because of Shark Lady which I read in the library of course, but somehow I ended up an ER doctor which is also excellent. I still love all things marine biology because of the library. Life takes its own twists and turns, whatever the magic of the library intends. But the love of fantasy and writing and books ran deep, deep, deep. The power of the library would not be denied in the end.
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My debut novel, A Magic Fierce and Bright, is all about adventure with heart and love and family and found family and a lot of amazing magic. I hope kids love it and that there are some kids who wander into the library just like I did and grab it and are entranced and want to write themselves. Those kids can have an amazingly enriched life too and when they do they’ll say—IT’S THE LIBRARIAN’S FAULT!
My deep and sincere gratitude goes to all you lovers of books and kids.
Meet the author
Hemant Nayak (he/him/his) is a writer of fantasy stories with a bit of heart and joy and a lot of the strange. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest. In his free time, he runs around the deep woods with his dogs, strums guitar in a garage band, and even plays Dungeons & Dragons with friends. When he’s not writing, he shifts to his alternate life as an ER doctor. Find out more about him at HemantNayak.com.
About A Magic Fierce and Bright
A young technomancer teams up with a handsome thief to save her sister in this propulsive, magic-filled young adult fantasy that is perfect for fans of Gearbreakers and Iron Widow.
Adya wants nothing more than to be left alone. Content to be loyal to no one but herself in the isolated jungles of South India, she dreams only of finding her lost sister, Priya, and making enough money to take care of their family. It’s too bad that her rare ability to wake electric machines—using the magic that wiped them out five centuries ago—also makes her a coveted political pawn. Everyone seems to believe that her technomancy can help them win the endless war for control over the magic’s supernatural source.
These senseless power struggles mean little to Adya. But when her enemies dangle news of her sister before her, she’s all too quick to leap at the chance to bring Priya home—even if it means teaming up with a rakish, disreputable thief in order to do it. With the threat of invasion looming ever larger on the horizon, Adya must reconcile the kind of person she is with the kind of person she wants to be and untangle the web of intrigue, conspiracy, and deceit that threatens to take all of India down with it.
Publisher : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (July 9, 2024)
ISBN-13 : 978-1665921817
Reading age : 12 years and up
Filed under: Guest Post
About Amanda MacGregor
Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.
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