Melvin lived in the Livingston Public Library. Well . . . he didn’t really live there. He just spent lots and lots of time there.

Melvin discovers that the public library is the place where he can find just about anything – including three librarians who help in his quest for knowledge.

“The library is a wonderful place to be if a person is curious.”

Librarians are prepared for anything. I know this for a fact. Let me tell you a tale. One day I took my service dog, Dude, to the library, and he barfed out his breakfast. The librarian immediately came running with an industrial-sized tube of wipes to clean it up. Apparently, that wasn’t the first time someone had thrown up in that library. My mom and I came back a couple days later with cookies to thank them.

I think I’d make a pretty good librarian. As an elective in 7^th and 8^th grade, I worked as a librarian assistant. I’d reshelve books and make sure they were in alphabetical order by author. I enjoyed putting the series books in the correct order. I was never asked to do that, but I have this need to put things in order.

Mr. Shelley, the middle school librarian, was really cool. He once told me that the author of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ came up with the word ‘Oz’ when he looked at his filing cabinet and saw ‘A-N’ and ‘O-Z.’ Since ‘Wizard of An’ didn’t sound very exciting, he went with ‘Oz.’ I don’t know if this is true or if he was just getting back at me for asking him if he was related to Mary Shelley.

As a bonus, here’s a funny comic about libraries: