The Story Collector 1 – The Story Collector

The Story Collector, by Kristin O'Donnell Tubb, is a mystery for 9 year olds about a girl who actually lives inside the New York Public Library.

What happens

Viviani Fedeler's father is the building superintendent, so home is an eight-room flat on the second floor. It's 1928. There are eighty-five miles of books downstairs and two stone lions on the steps, and she says good morning to both of them by name.

We meet her playing baseball in the Periodical Reading Room, using The House at Pooh Corner as home plate. This goes about as well as you'd expect with a librarian in the building.

At night, once the big doors boom shut, the whole place belongs to her. She builds thrones out of books. She keeps score against the night guard in an ongoing game called Master Thief.

And she collects stories, which is the trouble.

Because Viviani has decided her own life is boring. A new girl arrives from Giza who has climbed pyramids and ridden camels, and Viviani cannot think of one single thing about herself worth telling.

Then her father tells a ghost story about a red-whiskered workman who fell from the scaffolding and now hunts out mischief with a hammer. It's meant to keep her out of his workshop.

It works far too well.

What your reader will love is how the library is a whole world. Chapters are headed with Dewey decimal numbers. The basement is an old reservoir with cave walls. There's a locked custodian's cupboard that Viviani's big brother has told her is full of bones.

He's teasing, obviously. But as the Fedelers like to say, it could be true. And could is nearly as good as probably.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Worth knowing that this is a jumpy sort of book rather than a scary one. There's a ghost tale about a man dying in a fall, a shadowy figure in a dark basement, and a night where Viviani cries herself awake and her dad has to come and undo it. That scene is lovely, but a very nervous reader may want the light on.

The family are the best thing in it. Her mum dances round with the mashed potatoes. Her middle brother answers every question with a fact nobody asked for. Her dad tells the story of how she got her name, and it's worth the price of admission.

What to read next

This is the first of two Story Collector books in the library. The second, The Story Seeker, has Viviani chasing a byline in a newspaper contest while a code, some overdue books and a possible spy turn up in the stacks.