Saturday, 12 September 2020

Half a Dozen Girls


One very stormy night in July three years ago, the Sprague branch of the Salt Lake Library system was flooded. Thousands of books were destroyed. The high-gabled Tudor style building has been serving the Sugarhouse area since 1928. In 1935 it was recognized by the American Library Association as the most beautiful branch library in America. Repairs were sure to be costly and time-consuming, but the Sprague Library was closed for renovations on April Fool’s Day, 2019. Last November construction workers removed some built-in shelves and discovered a gap behind them where books had fallen. “Building with Logs,” “Making and Showing Your Own Films” and “General History of Architecture” aren’t likely to be familiar to today’s readers. Neither is “Lady of Lyons or Love and Pride,” a five-act melodrama from 1938. But I recognized “The Bird’s Christmas Carol.” The Kate Douglas Wiggin novel, written in 1886, has been my family’s holiday tradition for as long as I can remember.

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