By James Magruder

Every Saturday morning of my childhood, my mother would pile my two sisters and me into the station wagon to go to the public library, where we were allowed to check out ten books at a time. We had a tough time picking just ten. We’d often finish them all, our own and each other’s, by Wednesday and beg her to take us back after supper.

As a queer teen, the Wheaton Public Library in Wheaton, Illinois was where I indulged my first passion project–the Broadway Musical. I’d bike into town, then sit for hours at a table in by the arts section on the second floor, reading (and re-reading) the standard histories–both gossipy and scholarly–of the form and its most famous practitioners. Then head downstairs to the periodicals department, where I would fill out carbon slips for bound copies of Time, Newsweek, Life, Look, and The New Yorker so I could read the original reviews of all the shows I was learning about. I felt like a scholar. To date, it’s the only research I’ve ever carried out with a full heart and boundless enthusiasm.

I used to declare that I wanted to have my ashes stored in a hollowed-out copy of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and set on a shelf in my personal library, because a roomful of books–whether in Wheaton or Paris or the Pratt–had consistently been the happiest place on earth for me. I now know that my ashes will be laid to rest in Green Mount Cemetery among my husband’s family, but I can’t help but worry over the fate of my books.

Join us for the Pratt’s Writers LIVE! event with James Magruder and Jen Michalski  on Tuesday, October 26 at 7pm. Follow the Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall  Author James Macgruder’s Library Journey. 

Please submit your library journeys to journey@prattlibrary.org

by Jen Michalski

My library journey started with my grandfather. When we were kids, he would take us to the North Point Branch of the Baltimore County Public Library every week. I remember the smell of the library on Saturday mornings, the long, yellow-spined row of Nancy Drew books I worked my way through as a nine-year-old, as well as Encyclopedia Brown, Ramona Quimby, and, as I edged toward my preteen years, S.E. Hinton, Lois Duncan, and J. R. R. Tolkien. My family was working class, lucky enough to have a week’s vacation at Ocean City every year, but as a child I never got to travel outside of Eastern Baltimore County much, except in books—to Hong Kong and Japan with Nancy Drew, to Middle Earth with Tolkien, to Terabithia with C.S. Lewis and Katherine Paterson. 

But my journey didn’t only include books⎯I remember checking out REM’s Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction as well as Ella Fitzgerald LPs as a teenager, music I’d never hear on the radio in the tiny Eastern Shore town to which my family moved. It also provided necessary resources for a difficult time in my life. When I graduated college and moved to Baltimore City, the first thing I did was get a library card from the Central Branch of the Enoch Pratt Library. It was the early nineties, I hadn’t come out yet, and I remember picking up The Price of Salt, The Second Sex, and an LGBT handbook at a library sale. They were my first “queer” books, my first exploration of identify in a time before the Internet, and in the years to follow Enoch Pratt became my go-to place to digest important works of lesbian and gay authors. It was also the place at which I embarked on my journey as a professional writer, when I attended my first CityLit Festival in 2006. 

Of course, the pinnacle of my library journey is when I discovered a copy of one of my own novels, The Tide King, at the Central Branch. From young reader to writer to author, the library has played an integral part in my journey every step of the way. 

Don’t miss the Pratt’s Writers LIVE! event with Jen Michalski and James Magruder on Tuesday, October 26 at 7pm. Follow along The Summer She Was Under Water Author Jen Michalski Library Journey.

We want to hear your Pratt Library journey too. Email your story to journey@prattlibrary.org

This October, young students can learn more about science, technology, engineering, art, and math with the help of Hoopla! Check out the Virtual Zoo collection that’s full of educational fun.

Donda or Certified Lover Boy? We’re not willing to say who had the best album of 2021 so you’ll have to take a listen for yourself! Check out the latest music from chart-topping artists on Hoopla Music. 

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by picking up a new nonfiction book. Here’s a few selections of nonfiction, memoirs, and biographies that we think you’ll enjoy. 

Also, add these to your reading list: