Anne Carroll Moore, doyenne of the New York Public Library and Expert on Children's Books (Wikipedia)
I volunteered at the local library every summer when I was a teenager.
This was not originally my idea. Given my druthers, I would have been perfectly content to spend the summer reading, doing embroidery, sleeping, working my way through the Lensman series, napping, rewatching Star Trek, dogsitting for the neighbors, writing fanfiction, and not getting up until it was time for lunch.
My mother, not wishing to raise a human slug, had other ideas. “You need to get out of the house. Go to the library,” she said, and after a regretful look at my wee bed, I obeyed. Mum was a teacher, after all, with plenty of experience wrangling reluctant teenagers. When she said “do this,” one did, and that was all there was to it.
So off I went to the Pleasant Hills Public Library, first to read the books, then to shelve the books, and finally to assist the children’s librarian as needed. It was not a large place — it had begun as a couple of rooms at the borough fire station, eventually taking over the whole building, and no, I am not making this up — and I quickly made friends with the library staff. The collection was on the small size due to space restrictions but included some fascinating and unexpected items; they had a charter subscription to Ms., for instance, as well as the records of a public hearing in the early 1970’s in New York state from women testifying on the need for safe abortions. There was also a decent selection of science fiction and mysteries, some good history books, and a very good children’s room in the basement.
I was well past actually reading children’s books by then; like many bright children I’d skipped directly from the likes of Danny Dunn and the Amazing Electric Chipmunk of Mars to Murder on the Orient Express and other books intended for adults. I enjoyed flipping through the books in the children’s room as I shelved them, though, especially after I discovered that some of the older science fiction collection had migrated downstairs as tastes changed and the field evolved past space opera and gee-gosh-wow-they-built-a-SPACESHIP-IN-THEIR-GARAGE pulp. I also became at least acquainted with all the books I’d vaulted past when my aunt and mother began passing their old mysteries on to me, although there still quite a few children’s classics I’ve never read and never will.
It was a pleasant way to spend a summer afternoon, and I’m sure my mother appreciated having a few hours to herself for a change. One thing neither of us questioned, though, was the existence of a separate children’s room, stocked solely with literature deemed suitable for children and supervised by someone with specialized training in seeing to the literary needs of immature humans.
For that we must thank one of the great unsung figures in America letters: Anne Carroll Moore.
Moore, the only surviving daughter of an attorney and sometime legislator, was born in Maine during the first Grant administration. An intelligent and much-loved child, she deeply admired her father and was on track to go to law school herself until the deaths of her parents made that financially impossible. She then spent several years helping a widowed brother raise his children until he suggested she become a librarian. Whether he did this out of love for his sister or a desire to get her out of the house before frustration at having her career plans scuppered made life unbearable isn’t clear, but by the mid-1890’s she’d headed off to New York to enroll at the Pratt Institute’s one-year library course.
Librarians were just starting to professionalize around then, and libraries themselves were transitioning from solemn, quiet spaces devoted mainly to scholarship and fine literature to public institutions that served the entire populace. Moore, intelligent and driven, attended a lecture calling for libraries to have dedicated spaces where young patrons could read, listen to stories, and become lifelong learners under the dedicated eye of specially trained professionals.
She liked what she heard, and when the Pratt offered her a job to organize a children’s section of their own library, she agreed. Soon their children’s library boasted child-sized tables, a fine selection of quality books, and a full slate of programming such as summer reading clubs, puppet shows, story times, and other events aimed at the very youngest readers. Other libraries followed suit, and within a decade Moore was appointed to supervise the newly created Children’s Room at the New York Public Library, as well as manage the programming and approve the books purchased for the children’s rooms at branches throughout the Five Boroughs.
To say that Moore succeeded well beyond anyone’s expectations is putting it mildly. Under her direction the NYPL quickly became the gold standard for children’s libraries across the country, instituting story times, inclusive programming celebrating the many immigrant groups that flocked to the city, and lists of high quality children’s books distributed throughout the country. Her insistence on what she called the Four Respects (respect for children, respect for children’s books, respect for one’s co-workers, and respect for children’s librarians) helped children be taken seriously as patrons and their librarians as working professionals in their own right.
Within three years, Moore’s policies had not only improved the quality of children’s books and raised the status of children’s librarians, they had raised the standing of the library itself; fully one third of all books checked out of the NYPL system were children’s books, many by immigrant families thrilled to see that Moore was dedicated to providing “children of foreign parentage a feeling of pride in the beautiful things of the country [their] parents have left” instead of insisting they read only books by English-speaking authors. She also hired the first Puerto Rican and first African-American children’s librarians in the NYPL system, on the grounds that librarians should reflect the communities they served and be able to relate to them.
Moore’s success soon led to her becoming a popular lecturer, writer, and book reviewer, as well as a mentor to several generations of children’s librarians who ensured that her ideas would be put into practice in their own libraries. A visit to England led to her meeting noted authors such as Beatrix Potter and Walter de la Mare, and Moore took great pride in introducing their work to the American public. She even wrote two children’s books herself about “Nicholas Knickerbocker,” a wooden Dutch doll that she kept on her desk and used during her lectures. Her imprimatur could make an author’s career, and all too often did.
All too often that sort of power will go to even the best-intentioned person’s head. Anne Carroll Moore was no exception. She was so convinced that she and she alone knew what was best for small minds led to whatever she didn’t like being excluded from award consideration, or sometimes even from being purchased as all. She did not like series books, period, and though she might have been justified in scorning formulaic offerings from the Stratemeyer Syndicate, she lumped L. Frank Baum and Ruth Plumley Thompson’s Wizard of Oz books in with the likes of Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue. The entire children’s staff except Moore herself hated “Nicholas Knickerbocker” as cloying and obnoxious (especially when she would lecture erring staff members in Nicholas’ voice while holding up the doll in front of them), and rejoiced when she accidentally left him in a cab one day. And even though she hand-picked her successor, Frances Clarke Sayers, when the NYPL forced her to retire at age 70 in 1941, she was still such a dominant force that Sayers found it all but impossible to make any significant changes, or even hold an allegedly closed staff meeting without Moore tracking down the location and barging in to run things.
Worst of all, Moore could, and sometimes did, kill entire careers. She had a stamp made up that read “Not Recommended for Purchase by Expert” that she reserved for books she did not like or approve of, and librarians across the country figured that if the great Miss Moore of the NYPL didn’t think a book was worth buying, well, that was good enough for them. Writers did everything they could to avoid the GIANT STAMP O’DOOM marring their own books, and well into the 1930’s were still churning out stories that followed her preference for folklore of various types, wholesome families, and good old-fashioned fun. After all, one of the Nicholas Knickerbocker books had been a Newbery Honor Book so clearly Moore she knew what she was talking about, right?
Right?
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