When Oliver began work as a school librarian she felt qualified for the job. What she learned was that librarians are expected to serve as mediators and mental-health-crisis-support professionals, customer service reps and administrators of overdose treatment, fierce loyalists to institutionalized mythology and enforced silence, and arms of state surveillance. Here she highlights the national problems that have existed in library since they were founded:...

Scrapbooks containing items documenting the history and events of the Public Library of Des Moines. 1941 issue covers the 75th anniversary; 1965, the new West Side Branch; 1966, centennial; 1976, the U.S. bicentennial; 1978, partnership with the Yucatan; 1987 issue covers the celebration of the bicentennial of the Constitution; 1991 issues cover the 125th anniversary celebration of the Public Library of Des Moines.

"Two children learn the importance of librarians in their neighborhood"-- provided by publisher.

It has been several months since monsters last plagued the town of Stermont, and frankly Alexander Bopp (leader of the Super Secret Monster Patrol) is bored, and misses his friends Rip (immersed in video games) and Nikki (soccer camp), so when his father signs him up for a summer maker program at the library he is happy to go--but soon he starts finding weird old-timey objects, and monster trading cards, and it starts to look like maybe monsters are...

"A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being After the tragic death his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house-a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their...

"Many of us have vivid recollections of childhood visits to the public library: the unmistakable, slightly musty scent, the excitement of checking out a stack of newly-discovered books. Today's libraries also function as de facto community centers, and offer free access to the Internet, job-hunting assistance, or a warm place to take shelter along with the endless possibilities that spark your imagination the moment you open the cover of a book. There...

An act of civil disobedience turns into a standoff with police when homeless people in Cincinnati take over the public library to seek shelter from the bitter cold.

It has been a busy summer of makerspace projects at the library and monster hunting for the three members of the Super Secret Monster Patrol, and the puddles that are appearing all over town are a clue to the identity of another monster--an angry hydra water monster who is obsessed with cleaning up (literally) the town of Stermont, even if it means drowning all the messy children who live there.