Julie Fiveash: We All Have Something New to Learn

It took a pandemic for cartoonist and librarian Julie Fiveash to write the graphic novel that became their book, The Froggy Library.

“It initially came from a sketch I did during the pandemic of a frog in a little hat going on an adventure outdoors — something I wanted to do very badly while trapped inside,” they told EveryLibrary in an interview. “The sketch lingered for me and then germinated into a loose idea of a frog who worked at a tribal library, mirroring my own journey into a new career as a librarian.”

Fiveash’s career has taken them to all sorts of unexpected places. In 2021, Harvard University hired them as the first-ever Librarian of American Indigenous Studies at Tozzer Library. According to an article in The Harvard Crimson, “Their position carves out a distinct space in the world’s largest academic library system to focus exclusively on organizing, spotlighting, and acquiring materials in a field that has long been neglected.” These days, Fiveash lives in Los Angeles, and this spring, they introduced their debut book, The Froggy Library, to the world.

“I thought about the kind of story I wanted to tell for 200 pages, which was by far the longest comic I’d ever done,” they said. “It took something like a year to get the story to where it is now.”

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Fiveash is Indigenous themself, and being a Diné/Navajo librarian was a big influence on the themes and setting of The Froggy Library, which was created with young readers in mind. 

“Being Diné influences pretty much everything in my life, but being a librarian on top of that means I think a lot about information and knowledge gathering,” they said. “With this book, I wanted to highlight how one would go on this journey of knowledge gathering just to realize that the ‘conventional’ ways of doing that through a library or archive might not work with Indigenous forms of knowledge. It can be hard to explain to other librarians why taking a weaving class is considered a form of cultural knowledge gathering, and I wanted to explore that idea in this book.”

The Froggy Library explores the concept of building an archive and what that means. “An archive is so many things,” Fiveash told us. “It’s at once a stoic, record-keeping entity maintained by trained professionals, locked in a cool, dark room for temperature control, while also being a grandma’s box full of family photos. It can look different depending on the community doing it. I think this makes archives really exciting and so wonderfully varied, and I love that there’s such a wide spectrum of these archives to explore. I just wish archivists had more time/funding/space to do the work!”

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Fiveash particularly enjoys highlighting everyday community life: food, art, family, and place.

“It’s important to center those kinds of moments because they can be fleeting,” they said. “That neighbor won’t be here forever, that store, that garden, that pet — all live on a finite timeline, and the very real presence of them won’t be known forever, but it’s easy to take for granted. Keeping records grows in importance the more time passes, and it’s something that you don’t realize until it’s too late sometimes. This feeling comes up often with Indigenous knowledge work, especially with language.”

Storytelling and librarianship constantly intersect in Fiveash’s work. “A lot of librarianship involves storytelling and storykeeping. You start to freak out, though, once you realize the people whose stories are so important to maintain are starting to pass away, which is a continual issue with Indigenous knowledge. I think this creates this situation where many Indigenous folks end up becoming a type of knowledge keeper. I think my characters come to understand that the more they gather other people’s stories, it expands their view of the role of the library and cultural stewardship. I also think everyone would benefit from taking a few librarianship classes.”

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In particular, Fiveash praises tribal libraries as crucial for preserving Indigenous knowledge and community memory. “There are so many tribal libraries across North America that are doing a massive amount of independent work in language preservation and education, art education, archive management, on top of being a public library oftentimes. I think they deserve all the funding in the world to keep doing this kind of direct work.”

While many libraries are used to doing a lot with a little, Fiveash emphasizes that we all need to support them so that they can continue to exist. “We sometimes take for granted these spaces will just always be around and have infinite funding and staff to do the work, but in reality, it’s a lot of very real people running on extremely thin margins.”

Fiveash looks forward to readers connecting with The Froggy Library and hopes they will come away with a new understanding of libraries as well as a sense of curiosity. “I hope they feel like taking the time to learn more about their culture, their language, and their own family history,” they said. “I want young Native readers to feel encouraged to keep learning and not be afraid to ask questions. I don’t want anyone to feel shame about not knowing something because we all have something new to learn!”

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