By Jennifer Payne

---

At first glance, the Anne Carroll Moore Library — located in a quiet, well-lit space on the second floor of Edith Bowen Laboratory School — resembles any good media center in the hundreds of elementary schools across the state. But the origins of the library’s collection is a remarkable tale that traces back nearly 100 years to the New York Public Library.

It all began when Moore — a guest lecturer to the then Utah State Agricultural College — visited Cache Valley for two weeks in the summer of 1927.

Standing largely alone in a community of mostly male librarians across the country, she devoted much of her 45-year professional career to creating and maintaining a cozy, welcoming space where children could enjoy literature from within the walls of the country’s preeminent library — the New York Public Library.

Although it seems nonsensical today, children were not welcome inside public libraries at the turn of the century and creative works for children were much less common. The prevailing opinion was that children should be kept away from libraries because they might make noise, tear the pages of a book, or tip over a chair.

Moore disagreed.

She used her position as head of the newly established Children’s Room at the New York Public Library to create an environment where all children felt welcome. She created cozy reading nooks near windows, read books to children daily, and brought in child-size tables and chairs.

To encourage each child to respect the library’s books, she required them to enter their name in a black book under a pledge that read: “When I write my name in this book, I promise to take good care of the books I use in the library and at home, and to obey the rules of the library.” 

“Anne Carroll Moore was a visionary who understood that children deserve respect,” explains Rachel Linton, a media specialist at Edith Bowen Laboratory School. “She fought for their access to books and believed they could be trusted with library materials. She insisted on kid-sized furniture and books written specifically for children — things we take for granted now, but only because she proved they were essential.”

Over the ensuing years, Moore also became a respected book critic who exerted much influence over the world of children’s book publishing. According to lore, she was so unimpressed with the now beloved children’s classic Goodnight Moon that the New York library system didn’t carry the book until 1972, when the book was 25 years old.

Summer Visits to Cache Valley

In the summer of 1927, at the personal invitation of school president E.G. Peterson, the longest serving president (1916-1946) in Utah State University’s 137-year history, Moore began making visits to the campus — something she continued for several years. For two weeks, she would give two lectures each day and devote another hour to a book clinic so the public could peruse her book collection and discuss children’s literature with her.

But before Moore left for her first trip to Northern Utah, she contacted the New York publishing houses and the many children’s book authors she knew and asked them to contribute to a collection of books she was personally curating for the “children of the Wasatch Mountains.”

And contribute they did.

The collection she amassed over the next several years totaled about 600 books and included timeless classics such as The Wind in the Willows, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Swiss Family Robinson, and Little Women. It also included two children’s books she had written about a wooden elf named Nicholas Knickerbocker, several books of poems by Langston Hughes, and a first-edition book by Theodore Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, The King’s Stilts, which includes a treasured handwritten note to Moore on the dedication page.

The note is proof of the influence Moore had on the authors in New York. Geisel wrote, “To Anne Carroll Moore — who has been more help than anyone else to a fellow who wandered accidentally into the world of Children’s Books.”

A few days after she returned to New York City, the Board of Trustees of the Utah State Agricultural College signed a resolution designating Moore’s book collection the “Anne Carroll Moore Collection of Literature for Children and Young People.” In response to the copy of the resolution Moore received directly from Peterson, she expressed her “genuine thrill of pride that [her] name should be permanently associated with books and children in the Wasatch Mountains.”

USU’s new, modern children’s book collection was housed in the Merrill-Cazier Library for 30 years, until 1957. That year, the university’s teacher training site was moved from the Whittier School in Logan to a new building on campus, formally named Edith Bowen Laboratory School (the current school was built on the site of the original building in 2005). Because it would serve as a fully functioning elementary school, the USU librarians agreed it was the most appropriate place to house the treasured collection.

The original 600-book collection donated by Moore and her colleagues has since expanded to the robust collection of more than 25,000 books that now serves the children and USU community. But due to its vulnerable and somewhat tattered condition, in the early 2000s, the archivists moved the original collection back to the Merrill-Cazier Library. Today, the books are safely stored in Special Collections. There patrons can request to see the books, with the most popular being Dr. Seuss’s The King’s Stilts.

Now, Linton takes the sixth-grade EBLS students on an annual visit to the Special Collections Department to meet with the archivists and learn about the history of their school’s library and the woman who made it all happen.

“It’s one of the best parts of my job. During our last visit, the staff brought out the book donated to the Anne Carroll Moore Library by Theodor Geisel himself,” recalls Linton. “It was such a cool experience for them to see a real piece of our library’s history.”

Then and Now

Although it has been almost a century since her first visit to Logan, Moore’s impact at USU remains.

“When we give tours of our school to visitors, their strongest reaction is often from seeing the beautiful library and its collection that Anne Carroll Moore began for us,” says Edith Bowen Principal Nate Justis. “Her impact in the lives of thousands of children, college students, and researchers is immeasurable, and we will be forever grateful to her for that.”

Linton describes the various ways students choose to use the library as similar to the ways Moore herself envisioned in New York.

 “Some enjoy curling up by the windows for a quiet moment to themselves,” she says. “Others love discovering books about their favorite topics and learning more. Many enjoy listening to stories read aloud in the reading theater. We try to make the library as inviting as possible for everyone who wants to use it. We let our enthusiasm for reading show.

“It’s a library made with kids in mind. We know how important it is to help children fall in love with reading at an early age. It really sets them up for success and happiness later in life. We try to honor the values of Anne Carroll Moore at Edith Bowen in everything we do, making choices that always prioritize the students.”

The librarians have also adopted another powerful method of instilling a love for reading in the students — simply invite some of the most renowned children’s book authors to visit the school. In recent years, the school has hosted authors Brandon Mull, Tyler Whitesides, Jessica Day George, and Chris Grabenstein.

“Students get so excited to meet these authors and ask them questions,” Linton emphasizes. “After an author visit, their books fly off the library shelves.”

And when it comes to training the students to care for and respect the library’s collection, the library staff prioritizes it from the beginning.

“On the first day of library class with kindergarteners, we talk about how to use the library and care for the materials properly — simple things like keeping books away from water, applesauce, and baby brothers,” Linton quips. “I explain that everything in the library belongs to them and to everyone else. At the end of the lesson, each student signs our pledge book — a tradition Edith Bowen students have upheld for decades.”

Turns out, it’s the very same pledge Moore required of the children visiting the Children’s Room at the New York Public Library all those years ago.

Author’s Note: The Anne Carroll Moore Library is housed within the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services. In addition to the 350 elementary school students it serves each school day, the library is available for USU faculty, staff, and students to access its extensive collection of juvenile literature. To donate to the Anne Carroll Moore Library, visit ebls.usu.edu/library.