By Caroline Kusin Pritchard
The true story of a neighborhood that came together to rescue thousands of books after a library fire.
In 1966 a fire tore through the library at New York's Jewish Theological Seminary, and thousands of books were lost. The ones that survived were soaked and on the edge of ruin. This is the true story of what happened next: neighbors and religious leaders of every faith showing up together, forming lines to pass books hand to hand, drying them, cleaning them, and saving around 170,000 of them. It's a rescue story where the thing being rescued is stories themselves.
It takes something a child already understands, that a book is precious, and shows real grown-ups treating books that way with their whole hearts. The art is warm and full of collage, so a hard event lands as hope rather than fear. For a child who loves the library, this is a chance to see that a whole city once agreed the library was worth saving.