The Library of Ever by Zeno Alexander (review)

Eleven-year-old Lenora is exploring the public library when an enormous stone archway appears where moments before only a blank wall had stood. She steps through it to find an epically grand library with seemingly endless shelves, thousands of doors, a whirlwind of activity, and a businesslike librarian who hires Lenora on the spot as an assistant apprentice librarian. Her first task is to staff the help desk for Calendars, which ends up landing her in a time machine with a polite but frazzled robot; she manages to get back, and now it’s onto Cartography, where she treks “the world’s largest globe” to find the city with the longest name; her biggest challenge, though, is those nasty men in black who keep popping up and demanding that some information should be restricted. There is no subtlety in Alexander’s spirited pro-library message, and the tone unfortunately moves into preachy when Lenora scolds the villains; the book also takes a few shots at screens and social media with a heavy hand. The library world, however, is utterly enchanting, and Lenora’s journey through it is full of delightful, internet-hole inspiring tidbits; an ancient Egyptian city devoted entirely to the worship of cats, the ins and out of ant communication, and the lost languages Linear A and Linear B are just a few of the subjects of Lenora’s searches that may send readers off on journeys of their own.