Janet Skeslien Charles on Brave Librarians Then and Now

Libraries gave New York Times best-selling author Janet Skeslien Charles the idea that “a little girl in rural Montana could travel all around the world and use your talent and voice.” Now she lives in France, where she intended to teach for one year and never left.

As a child, Charles loved reading books about inspiring women like Eleanor Roosevelt and Marie Curie. Her earliest memories are visiting the Toole County Library in Shelby, Montana, with her mother. As an adult, libraries play a huge role in Charles’s historical novels like The Paris Library (Atria Books, 2022) and Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade (Simon & Schuster, 2024).

“Having worked at the American Library, I felt compelled to write about the courage of the librarians who hand delivered books to Jewish readers during World War II,” Charles tells us. “During my research for The Paris Library, I was thrilled to learn about an unknown American librarian who had a huge impact on France, though her selflessness came at a great cost to her. Jessie Carson, an NYPL children’s librarian of modest means, was hired by the American Committee for Devastated France to head their library section.”

The American Committee for Devastated France, also known as CARD, was a volunteer group of American women who wanted to help France recover after World War II. Charles spent ten years researching Carson’s history at the Morgan Library, the New York Public Library, and archives across France. Many of Carson’s innovations are still hugely influential on libraries today.

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“Jessie Carson brought the concept of children’s libraries and open stacks,” Charles says. “She created the first cozy libraries that welcomed the whole family. After the war, she transformed dilapidated ambulances into bookmobiles. She trained the first Frenchwomen to be librarians, hitherto a profession for men. She paved the way for an international library school.”

Charles’s historical novel Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade, based on Carson’s life, shows how one person can make a huge impact and highlights the power of books in times of crisis.

“In America, libraries are on the front line of our culture wars,” says Charles. “Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, was fired by this administration. Hayden dedicated her life to public service, made sure children love to read, and protected our books, history, and artifacts. The Library of Congress is our national memory, and its guardian has been displaced.”

Like Jessie Carson, present-day librarians need to have courage. “Today’s librarians deal with copy-and-paste assaults, in the form of book ban challenges from right-wing interest groups who hope to control what we think and what we learn. It is shocking that in 2024, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom logged 821 attempts to censor library materials and services, and that 2,452 unique titles were challenged,” Charles says. “Librarians play a key role in protecting knowledge and making sure that it is shared.”

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Charles sees libraries as great equalizers that give readers windows to the world. “As a teen, I was able to read books by James Baldwin because they were available in the library. Reading his work allowed me to dream of living and writing in France one day,” she says. “Every book that is censored and removed from a library shelf is a dream taken away from a kid in need of hope, inspiration, knowledge, and reassurance.”

Charles particularly loves going to the national library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. “Being there takes me away from daily life (buying groceries, washing clothes, paying bills, etc.) and allows me to focus on the thing I love most — researching and writing books,” she says. “The library is a haven that allows me to forget my day-to-day worries. Inside the BNF, there is a canteen, where a friend and I have lunch. We can spend the whole day in the library surrounded by books and people who are passionate about their projects.”

She also still loves her hometown library in Shelby, Montana. “In some ways, it hasn’t changed since I was a child. The same arrowheads are on display in cases. I find the same bookish smell. The librarian gives me a hug when I visit after a year’s absence. There are the same magazine racks and tables,” she says. “But this library continues to grow and change and share. Recently, it took on the role of gallery. It featured art from incarcerated people in the nearby prison. The library made it possible for these artists to take part in the community. These exchanges and openness are the heart of the library.”

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Charles’s books celebrate the resilience of women through the power of literature and libraries. “The all-women unit of the American Committee for Devastated France has been written out of history, even though they worked just miles from the front and received the war cross medal for their courage under fire,” she says. “Until I started researching Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade, I had never heard of Jessie Carson, though I worked at a place where she’d helped found a library school. We need to share the contribution of women more widely.”

Charles’s newest novel, The Parisian Chapter, tells the story of Lily, a young woman from Montana who takes a job at the American Library in Paris. The book shows that library work can also be dangerous and requires courage, especially for women. She says this insight comes from her own experience with a problem patron who hid in the shadows after an evening event, assuming she would be alone as she closed up for the night. The Parisian Chapter also shows what can happen with book banning when political and religious groups pressure their members to stop using the library.

She hopes her novels inspire readers to find out more about the real-life heroines. “In these difficult times, I also hope that the book inspires readers to look more closely in their community to find the quiet modern-day heroes and in turn to become someone’s hero.”