The Lonely Book

The Lonely Book

Written by Kate Bernheimer

Illustrated by Chris Sheban

This is the story of a book, a book with a picture on its cover of a girl in the forest under a toadstool.  When the book comes to the library for the first time, it is placed on the shelf for all new books and it is checked out by many children. This makes the book happy. Years pass and the book is checked out less and less. Its cover is faded, its pages are torn. The book is lonely. Then one day a little girl, Alice, stumbles upon the book and checks it out. She doesn’t care that the cover is worn, pages are torn, and the last page is missing altogether. She loves the book and shows it to all her friends. When the book is returned to the library, Alice is sad and wants to go back to find the book. By the time she goes back to the library, the book has been accidentally taken down into the basement, with all of the other books that will be put on a library book sale, though to Alice and the librarian who tries to help her, the book is only missing. At the book sale, Alice finds the book and takes it home with her for good.

I thought the author of this book did an excellent job of making something as commonplace to a librarian as a book getting old and being weeded out of the collection into a beautiful, touching fairy tale. The soft, muted illustrations only added to the hushed fairyland effect. As a librarian, I found myself shaking my head and wondering why a book that was missing pages and as worn as this one seemed to be hadn’t been given the heavy-ho long ago.

This was the same way I felt when watching the movie The Pagemaster. The books that Richard eventually brings home from the library at the end of the movie are huge, old, and warped. Where was the librarian who was supposed to be weeding out damaged materials? And, whether for good or for ill, librarians should be keeping track of what books have fallen out of popularity and weeded out of the collection to make way for newer titles. The book, The Pagemaster, by David Kirschner, doesn’t allude to the books being dilapidated, so my librarian feathers weren’t ruffled. In any case, I would highly recommend The Pagemaster in its book form, but even the movie is a good choice for kids.

I digress.

Reading The Lonely Book reminded me of my own affinity for certain books. Not just for certain titles, but certain copies of certain books. I found myself remembering how my library had discarded the exact copy of Black Beauty that I had read as a nine-year-old and how I excitedly snatched it off of the sale rack.

All in all, I enjoyed this book. Sometimes books about books just appeal to book lovers. But sometimes books about books make book lovers. Read The Lonely Book to your children and see what happens! And while you’re at it, follow that up with a read-through of The Pagemaster! 

Kate Bernheimer