A Kind of Paradise

You think middle grade is a safe bet when you're trying to consume light and fluffy media because 2020 is putting you through it? Wrong, this book attacked me in my own home, which I am still leaving as little as possible.

A Kind of Paradise is a book about how important public libraries are to the community, how many small and big things they do for so many. How they provide opportunities to learn and grow and change, how they provide comfort and fun. How they let people both escape the world and connect with one another. They provide people things they can't find anywhere else, for free. Public libraries are quite literally a lifeline for many of society's most vulnerable.

A Kind of Paradise is also about how hard public libraries often have to fight for even a scrap of economic stability. It's about disconnects between the ornate gilded past and current shoestring budgets. It's about how some dismiss the library as irrelevant in the 21st Century, as no longer necessary or worth it. As a public library employee both yearning for and terrified of reopening our doors to the public during an epidemic, amidst sweeping funding cuts, it hit way too close to home (where I am).

This book is a good depiction of work in a public library—you can tell the author has firsthand experience. It's rarely glamorous, it's often gross. You encounter a lot of aggravation that has nothing to do with you. You treat people with more patience and dignity than they might ever show you. You listen, both to sympathize and solve. You enforce policies equitably, which sometimes includes making exceptions. But I tell you what, there's nothing more gratifying that helping an elderly patron print off photos of their granddaughter, who, they'll have you know, just placed second in the school science fair. You can't convince me otherwise.