About the Author

Suzanne Williams is the award-winning author of more than 60 books for children, from picture books and easy readers to chapter books and middle-grade fiction series. A former elementary school librarian, she lives near Seattle.

Steven Kellogg is a beloved author and illustrator who has published more than 100 picture books, including the classics The Mysterious Tadpole, Can I Keep Him?, The Island of the Skog, and Is Your Mama a Llama?, and Pinkerton, Behave!, which was on Horn Book's and Booklist’s Best of the Year lists and led to four sequels. Kellogg is a winner of the Regina Medal for his lifetime contribution to children’s literature. His books have received numerous accolades, such as being named Reading Rainbow featured selections and winning the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Irma Simonton Black Award, the IRA-CBC Children’s Choice Award, and the Parents’ Choice Award.

Reviews

“A librarian’s favorite fantasy . . . The silliness of both story and pictures are perfectly matched . . . A winner for storytimes anywhere.”
—School Library Journal, starred review“This love story about books is enough to make anyone wish for a permanent TV blackout!”
—Children’s Literature

"I bet you think that all librarians are mousy little old ladies," opens Williams's (Mommy Doesn't Know My Name) jovial tale of a spunky, book-loving girl who grows up to become a charismatic librarian. Though Lil plans a storytelling festival and stocks the stacks with new books, no one comes to check them out. The town's residents are too busy watching TV, which to her "was an evil that ranked right up there with poison ivy and mosquitoes." When a storm knocks out the electricity for two weeks, the resourceful bibliophile hooks the population on reading as she pushes a bookmobile (whose battery is "deader than a pickled herring") through town, using muscle power acquired from schlepping stacks of books as a child. Her awesome strength also helps the woman make book lovers of a barely literate motorcycle gang‘a humorous feat that won't be lost on reluctant young readers. Kellogg's wit is in full evidence in his waggish illustrations, prepared using ink and pencil line and watercolor washes. Adding to the sparkle of Williams's narrative are such spectacles as multiple TVs lighting up the windows of every single house and the bikers, in a pig-pile on the library floor, fighting for a copy of Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle. Lighthearted yet illuminating, this is a volume bound to lure kids from the TV screen. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)

"A librarian's favorite fantasy . . . The silliness of both story and pictures are perfectly matched . . . A winner for storytimes anywhere."
-School Library Journal, starred review

"This love story about books is enough to make anyone wish for a permanent TV blackout!"
-Children's Literature