The Library Card (by Jerry Spinelli)

Mongoose is a young teen who is being led down the road to serious delinquency by his best friend Weasel. From shoplifting to vandalism, their crimes are getting bigger, as are Weasel's plans to drop out and live on the streets. When they find the card Weasel tosses it away. But it keeps reappearing, and Mongoose finally steps into a library for the first time in his life to find out about a strange bug he encountered while spray painting a tree. When he hands the card to the librarian on the way in, she says, "No, this is not to let you in. It's to let a book out." The book she gives him is called "I Wonder," and it contains far more than just the bug he was looking for.

Brenda is a TV addict, and when her parents decide to participate in a week long Great TV Turn-Off, she is completely lost. When she finds the card she hangs on to it because its blue rectangle reminds her of the TV set. But when she sleepwalks her way to the library, she finds a letter addressed to her which guides her to her own biography. She is fascinated to read about her own early childhood, but the words abruptly end after the first time she turns on the TV, and the rest of the pages are blank. So she becomes maniacally determined to fill them

Sonseray is homeless, living in a car with his father. Though he appears hardened and is constantly in trouble, his mother's death from a drug overdose years ago has left a hole in his life that he just can't fill, no matter what he does. But Miss Storytime at the library has a surprise for him.

April's new life on the mushroom farm her parents bought is less than appealing. When she goes on a hike trying to escape the ever present smell of the horse manure that the mushrooms grow in, she connects up with a bookmobile that is being hijacked by a teenaged runaway.

Jerry Spinelli has had a strange career. For a long time he was a competent toiler in the orchards of children's literature, producing a number of perfectly decent novels, nothing special or unusual, but enjoyable. Then, like a bolt from the blue, came Maniac Magee, a novel so far superior to anything else he had done that I had to wonder what profound change had come over him. It earned him a Newbery Medal and a place in the pantheon of truly great children's novels. I thought he had ascended to a new level of writing, and eagerly awaited his next. But when it came it was another of his perfectly respectable, not-going-to-set-the-world-on-fire novels. So it seemed that maybe he just had this one, truly great novel in him, and now that it was out, he could go back to being a mere mortal.

But wait. While The Library Card is not on the same level with Maniac Magee (maybe that's not really possible or fair to expect), it is far better than his ordinary books. Like Bruce Brooks's What Hearts, its structure is of four related novellas. What ties these stories together, however, is a mysterious blue library card that has a powerful impact on the life of whoever finds it. It leads its possessors to a library whose enigmatic librarian seems to know more about them than they know themselves. Each story is a small gem, and each is an imaginative, offbeat, and often poignant reminder of the power of books and libraries, and the wisdom of librarians, who know that placing just the right book in a child's hands can change his life forever.

Author: Jerry Spinelli
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Publication date: November 14, 2004
Number of pages: 148
Paperback price: $4.99