📌 Miss Shuttleworth: School Librarian Extraordinaire
She made the library an inviting and non-judgmental space.
This is a part of the “memorials” series I envisioned after re-reading my favorite Capote story. Previous people I’ve written about include my great aunt Mary Florence (aka Pitty Pat) and Diane Garett Brem.
Today, I’d love to talk about a librarian who meant so much to Little Elayne—Anne Shuttleworth, the 1980s-era school librarian for Creswell Elementary in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Like most librarians, Miss Shuttleworth truly loved kids' books—and kids—and she was particularly gifted in imbuing schoolchildren with the idea of a library as a social center. She read to us, ran our annual School Library Week (which included a Scholastic Book Fair, a book character dress-up day1, and a poetry contest), taught us about Newbery and Caldecott medals (and had posters of all the winning books on her door), showed us Reading Rainbow and Schoolhouse Rock video—all that, and her bulletin board game was on point.
Best of all, her whole book-checkout setup made the office supply addict in me positively drool, what with all the book-stacking and stamping and cataloging and paper cards galore.
How much did I revere Miss Shuttleworth? Well, in second grade, I remember checking out the biggest book I could2 in a sincere, if silly, attempt to impress her.3
Miss Shuttleworth introduced me to the library as a place you went regularly4. Yet, it wasn’t just “the library” that she introduced me to (though that would have been plenty). She also particularly loved poetry and read us hilarious ones by Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky.
Anyhow, here’s a story that beautifully illustrates how Miss Shuttleworth was—and (nerd alert!) it concerns an old copy of Ursula Nordstrom’s middle-grade book, The Secret Language.
Creswell was not awash in funding, and quite a few books on the shelves dated back to the 50s and 60s. Luckily, I thought hardcover vintage books were the epitome of adulting and didn’t let a little must stand in the way of borrowing. So, one day, I came across one with a blue linen cover and NORDSTROM5….THE SECRET LANGUAGE….HARPER on the spine.
A secret language? Sign me up. I slid the book off the shelf and soon fell in love with the story, including Mary Chalmers’s art. And what a book! I read and re-read it, reveling in the idea of boarding school and self-directed BFF adventures.
When I brought it back, I told Ms. Shuttleworth how much I loved it and wished I could check it out again—alas, this was right before summer. Looking back, I'm sure she knew my family was in tight financial times—I was always worried about book fines and getting books back on time to avoid them. Anyway, she told me (and this makes me so emotional, thinking back), "You know what, Elayne? No one else has checked out this book for a long time. I was just about to let it go. Would you like it?" And I was like, "Oh, no, I can't." And she took the pocket out of the back, marked out Creswell Elementary's library stamp from the front page, wrote Elayne there instead, handed it to me, and said, "Well, I can't lend it now. Better take it with you." I still have that book--it's so precious to me. I can't even tell you how many times I've read it.
The purple on the cover is from when I tried to write "By Ursula Nordstrom" in all caps on the front with a purple marker. I was horrified when the marker bled all over the linen, and my attempts at cleaning made it so much worse. 😂 I was mad at myself for essentially ruining the cover for many years, but now I love the wabi-sabi of what a very well-loved kid's book looks like.
From what I can find online, Miss Shuttleworth passed away in 2007. I wish I could have told her about my writing now and how much her influence shaped my love of reading in general, but of course, especially of children’s books.
Your “schooled in the library” friend,
Elayne
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Every year, she dressed up, including one time as Madeline—complete with a convincing yellow outfit and hat that (being way before Internet buying) must have taken her a while to plan, locate, and buy!
The book was titled “Desert Snakes of the Grand Canyon,” and it was more of a field guide than a book. There were pitifully few illustrations, and it was a slog, even for a girl who was genuinely interested in snakes and other wild animals.
The joke was on me--something about the showiness of me borrowing such an oversized book bothered my mom. So she made me read the whole thing aloud, night by night, and then painstakingly hand-write a report on it, which, given I was a second grader, took forever. I did learn a lot (an awful lot) about snakes, but I don’t know why Mom had so often felt she had to take her “lessons” so far. Why did I need to be punished for wanting to read the biggest book in the library? And where did the report go after I submitted it to her? (I suspect Señor Trashcan.) Sigh.
To be clear, my parents weren’t anti-library; they were just swamped, and so we really didn’t go until my brothers were born, I was much older, and my mom no longer worked outside the home. At the time, my dad was in medical school and took care of me in the mornings, and then my mom came home from her nursing shift and took care of me in the afternoons. So, they (understandably) needed a nap far more than anything else.
Later, while reading Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” I noticed Shel’s “To Ursula” dedication, ran to show my mom, and told her I thought the two authors knew one another. (I didn’t know what an editor was at the time and thought Ursula was like Elayne, in that no one else seemed to have either name.) “There are lots of Ursulas in the world,” Mom said, stifling a laugh. Anyhow, this was me as an adult later, when I realized that Ursula actually *was* precisely the same lady in both instances.
School Librarian Goals right here!!
what a wonderful librarian - you were lucky!