The Keeper of Stories

Lyrical text with prayer-like refrains joins impressionistic collage and multimedia images as Kusin Pritchard (Where Is Poppy?) and Alko (Sharing Shalom) recount the 1966 fire at New York City’s Jewish Theological Seminary Library. Founded in 1893, the Upper West Side library served as “a keeper of stories. A keeper of memories. A keeper of hope,” welcoming readers of many backgrounds and playing an essential role in Jewish culture: “When others tried to erase these stories and their tellers, the keeper welcomed the words that were safe nowhere else.” Seventy-some years later, flames erupt, and the blaze is shown sending black curls of smoke into the air alongside words and images, the scene seeming to draw parallels with the Holocaust. After firefighters wrap the library bookshelves in canvas, streams of water from firehoses course among the precious volumes (“Rushing water, keep our stories alive,” text implores). Urgency grips the city after the fire, and volunteers form a human chain to remove the books, one by one, while further recovery efforts involve a simple action: “thousands of hands” press the wet pages between paper towels, eventually saving 170,000 volumes. Readers are pulled into the desperate fight to save irreplaceable treasures throughout a work that emphasizes the keeping done not only by libraries but by communities and people, too—guardians of memory and meaning, preserving the past for future generations. Characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Back matter includes contextualizing information and an author’s note. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown. Illustrator’s agent: Marietta B. Zacker, Gallt and Zacker Literary. (Feb.)