“I don’t want to,” Pearl said.
“Be brave. Be a witness.”
“Forget it, Francine.”
“It’s what you fought for, Pearl! You owe it to yourself.”
“It’ll just make me sad.”
“Better to see than not to see,” said Francine. “Better to know than not to know.”
So Pearl let her friend pull her up and walk her to the doorway. They pulled aside the screening so they could see inside.
Ugh. It was like a blow to the stomach.
The mullioned windows had been removed and the holes boarded over with plywood. Pearl knew they would be put back again at the end, but right now, the sight was gut-wrenching. One whole side of the cast-iron framework of the mezzanine and the stacks below had been removed as though they had never been there. The room looked huge, gaping, empty, devastated.
Pearl couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe.
“Gutted,” said Francine, behind her. Pearl knew she meant both the room and herself.
“Nobody would ever know what used to be here,” said Pearl.
“That’s how it will be for the next generation,” said Francine.
“Nobody will ever know what we did,” Pearl added. “Kids like Rose will come for story hour with their parents and then when they’re in school, they’ll get their own library cards and take out books, and they’ll mess around in the garden and play Rock Lady games just because they learned them at school without knowing why.”
Francine added, “They’ll wear Reading Raccoon baseball caps and read the Moon and not know where it all came from. And that’ll be okay. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Because we’ll know.”
“They’ll know, too,” Pearl said. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“How?” asked Francine.
“Same as always,” said Pearl. “That’s what stories are for.”
“Oh, world, I cannot hold thee close enough!”
—“GOD’S WORLD”
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY1
THE END
1 From the poem “God’s World,” from Renascence and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Harper, 1917).
A Small Selection of the Books Pearl Reads
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll • A Victorian Anthology, edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman • Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban • The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander • Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis • Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, illustrated by Garth Williams • The Crossover by Kwame Alexander El Deafo by Cece Bell • The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman Guess What? by Mem Fox, illustrated by Vivienne Goodman • The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay • Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling • Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood • Historical Atlas of New York State by William P. Munger • The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien Holes by Louis Sachar • If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff • In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak • In Search of Sasquatch by Kelly Milner Halls • The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn, illustrated by Ruth E. Harper and Nancy M. Leak • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott • Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans • Matilda by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake • Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton • Mine the Harvest by Edna St. Vincent Millay • Nuts to You by Lynne Rae Perkins • Paul Bunyan: A Tall Tale Retold and Illustrated by Steven Kellogg • Pinky Pye by Eleanor Estes, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone • The Princess Marries the Page: A Play in One Act by Edna St. Vincent Millay • Raccoons: A Natural History by Samuel I. Zeveloff • Raccoons Are the Brightest People by Sterling North • Rascal by Sterling North • Renascence and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay • The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats • Strega Nona by Tomie DePaola • Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig • Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll • Treehouse Chronicles: One Man’s Dream of Life Aloft by S. Peter Lewis and T.B.R. Walsh • When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead • National Geographic • The New Yorker Time Magazine • U.S. News & World Report • Utne Reader • The Wall Street Journal
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The setting for this book is composed of a combination of libraries:
Fairfield Public Library; and the Harlem, Ottendorfer, Tompkins Square, and Hudson Park branches of the New York Public Library
Thank you to the following for their inspiration:
Fairfield Public Library, Fairfield, Connecticut, where I grew up and worked:
Arne Bass, Peggy Abramo, Pearl Wiebe, and Karen Whitney
pages Carol Stierle, Adéle Brownfield, Paul Meijer, Marlene Standish, Lynn Cressia, and David Kelleher
Thank you to the following for their guidance:
at the New York Public Library:
Kristy Raffensberger and Stevie Feliciano
at Connecticut State Library:
Linda Williams
at Cragin Memorial Library:
Kate Byroade and her recommendees
Maryclaire Quine
Gail Carson Levine
Bethany Pinho
Emily Young
There are so many more libraries and librarians who have sheltered and inspired me, each one a shining gem. Thank you.
Hugs also to Taylor, Kayla, Jessixa, and Faye.
Karen Romano Young has written nearly two dozen books for children, including the acclaimed Hundred Percent, and has illustrated several, including the groundbreaking graphic novel Doodlebug and its sequel. When not at sea writing and drawing about ocean science, she writes stories in a barn in the woods. She would be very happy living in a library. She lives in Connecticut.
Jessixa Bagley’s picture books have received much acclaim, including several Junior Library Guild selections, the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Text, and the Ezra Jack Keats Honor award for New Writer. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon Page 31
