The Grimm Legacy (e-book) by Polly Shulman

Because of a history project on the Grimm Brothers, Elizabeth starts working at the New York Circulating Material Repository, a library which loans out material objects rather than books, as a page.  There is she is granted access to the Grimm Collection, a magical collection involving objects collected by the Grimms themselves, not only related to their fairy tales but straight out of them entirely.  Because it turns out the stories which quite made up and that magical objects are extremely powerful and very troublesome...

The stack door opened and an unfamiliar librarian came in.  She was tall and skinny, with glasses and hair in a bun; she looked like a stereotype of a librarian.  She was the first one I'd eve seen who looked like that.  p.42 e-book

The concept of this book is really fun.  You might know how much I love fairy tales and this book was right up my alley. The idea that the magical objects are real is so awesome and I like how they were dangerous too in their own right.  And a lending library of objects, not just magical, but historical and useful made me little librarian's heart flutter.  Really any book set in a library makes me happy, but the idea of this one and how it works is really well thought out and makes me wish I was a librarian there. 

There are parts that stretch the imagination a bit too much and made me raise an eyebrow and I was less than keen on the boys of the book and how they factored into the story.  I found them off-putting, especially Aaron, the head page.  I waited for him to be a little more umph to justify Elizabeth's interest but I don't feel like I got that.  Elizabeth, though, was a sweet and generous girl, sort of playing out a Cinderella role and she made a good main character.  The adventures that take place really made the book move along and it never stalled.  If you are interested in fairy tales and the Grimm Brothers, then this is a fun book.


Hogwarts: History of Magic
E-Books

Libyrinth

Haly is a clerk to Libyrarian Selene in the Libyrinth, a vast library containing just about every book ever written. Haly is unique though since she can hear the books talk, they read themselves to her. When she is taken by the Eradicants, an illiterate people who believe words are murdered once they are written down, she is thought to be their Redeemer, the one who can unite the Word and the Song. In their city, Haly realizes the truth of her world's history and must convince the Eradicants of it before they destroy her beloved Libyrinth.

Okay, seriously, a young adult science fiction book about librarians, how was I not going to love it? It was really good. The chapters alternate between Haly and her friend, Clauda, one of the servents in the Libyrinth. In the end, it comes down to the two of them to save the Libyrinth and all the books contain therein. The world was really well built and I got excellent visuals from the descriptions. I was a little confused about the origins of Haly, but since, it turns out, this is a trilogy (of course it is! Everything is nowadays) I'm sure to get more background on her and on the world in general. I would definitely recommend this book and say give it a try. It's about librarians! Don't get put off by the science fiction aspect, though, if that's not your thing. It's not very sciencey, mostly it's just awesome.