Saving Eli’s Library
Ages 4-8
Illustrated by Brittany Jackson
Albert Whitman & Company (2020)
Available in hardcover and e-book
Eli and Dad drove to the library through sheets of rain. The windshield wipers slapped and swished. The river roared like a monster from one of Miss Mudge’s stories.
Eli Loves going to the library for Miss Mudge’s Story Circle. Then, one stormy day, the nearby river rages and rises, threatening to flood the building. Eli and his dad brave the weather to try to save the books.
Miss Mudge’s stories always have happy endings. Will this one?
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AmazonReviews
“A delight for all the book lovers and friends of libraries.”―Kirkus Reviews
“A great read aloud in a library, especially when discussing children helping the community or the role of libraries” – Youth Services Book Review
Honors
- Sheltering Wings (Indiana) 2025 Men IN Action Read featured book
More
- Watch my interview with Sheltering Wings
- Check out these photos of volunteer men sharing Eli’s Library with nearly 500 classes in Indianda.
The Story Behind the Story
Saving Eli’s Library was inspired by the true story of the public library in Lincoln, Vermont, and its many calamities and rebirths. First, a fire struck in 1924, and the town moved it into the basement of a new community center beside the New Haven River. Then the river flooded in 1933, wiping out the entire collection, and the town rallied to replace the lost books. In 1998 the river flooded again, and the town rallied once more.
They built a new, free-standing library away from the river, with the books that had survived the flood forming the core of the new collection.
One of the volunteers who helped rebuild the library was my late friend Luke Curtis, the husband of my friend Trish Hanson, who inspired Breakout at the Bug Lab. Here’s the groundbreaking ceremony for the new building. Luke is the man on the far left. I don’t know the name of the child beside him. Maybe it’s Eli?
Eli and the other characters are fictional, including Miss Mudge, who is named for my mother, a school librarian whose childhood nickname was Mudge. But there is nothing made-up about town’s love for their library, or the power of rain and rivers.
Mudge and me