By Emily R. Zarevich, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Everyone is looking for something specific when they walk into their city or town’s public library.
Maybe they’re looking for books on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius for their school history project. Maybe they need to use a computer for job searching, as they do not have Wi-Fi at home. Maybe they’re looking for social activities to do with their shy toddler who wants to make new friends. Maybe they want to pick up a paper copy of the local newspaper and read it in one of the library’s quiet reading rooms. Maybe they just want a place to cool off when the sun is too hot.
Every situation has the same central concept in common: everyone is seeking out a safe and inviting place away from home. Hamilton author Joyce Grant champions libraries as the ultimate “third place” in her intrepid new children’s book aimed at intermediate readers. It is titled This is a Library Book: Check Out the Places and People Sharing Knowledge and Building Communities, and it is a love letter to the history of the written word and where it’s stored. This new illustrated work will be published by Kids Can Press on October 6, 2026.
Grant is a well-known Ontario journalist who runs the popular website Teaching Kids News, which instructs young people on how to interact with media in a mature and mindful way. This is a Library Book is due to come out at a time when her young readers will be a month into their 2026 fall school year. Students will be seeking out resources for school assignments or out of curiosity. With this new publication, Grant encourages students of all ages to develop a healthy relationship with both their online and offline reading material, think critically about what they read, and seek out new information from reliable sources when something perplexes them or catches their interest.
Grant also relays an important message for her young readers: in whatever community they live in, a library should also serve as a welcoming place of acceptance and universal access to free knowledge. An inclusive library does not discriminate or withhold knowledge from anyone. And it doesn’t always have to be found in a traditional building either.
“Wherever there’s a community, it’s likely you will find a library. In the heart of a bustling city. In war zones. In a desert. And in those libraries, you will find the soul of that community and the wisdom of its people,” Grant writes.
Grant’s writing style in This is a Library Book is meticulously tailored to appeal to the inquisitive, imaginative minds of children, who will appreciate Grant’s sense of the mystic when it comes to talking about the wonder of the world’s most famous libraries of the past and present. For example, Grant’s version of the story of the Future Library project in Norway is described with the reverence of a creation myth. The project was started in 2013. She writes similarly on major historic events such as the tragedy of the Library of Alexandria, whose destruction has been debated by historians for centuries. The history of libraries is the history of humans.
Grant also respects the intelligence of her young readers and their potential for understanding complicated subjects. For example, she does not pull away from diving into the deep socio-political aspects of the act of reading.
Grant takes time, for example, to carefully explain to her readers the expansive class divides that books created before the invention of the printing press around 1440. In past time periods, only the most educated people could write books, and only the most wealthy and leisured could afford to buy them and spend time reading them. This is an important lesson to consider in our modern age, where, in many places throughout the world, literacy is still a major mark of privilege.
“Who could afford those expensive early books? Rich people. They built private libraries, where they would sometimes chain the priceless books to the shelves so visitors didn’t wander off with them,” Grant writes on the topic of historic literary gatekeeping.
And poverty is not the only factor standing in the way of people reading, according to Grant. Sexism, racism, religious prejudice, queerphobia, and other forms of identity discrimination can be responsible for people being excluded from accessing books with vital information that could improve their quality of life.
Chanelle Nibbelink, a Canadian American artist from Southern California, illustrates the book in a lovely and lively comic style and creates a cast of memorable characters, all of whom are bookworms, that Grant’s diverse readership can relate to. A teenager with a rainbow on their shirt delves into LGBTQ+ literature beside a person in a wheelchair enjoying a coffee from a library café and declaring, “Free information for everyone!” Nibbelink also includes non-human, real-life celebrities such as a proud Roshan the Camel, a hero on four legs who travels across Pakistan delivering books to children in isolated, remote villages.
Also within the pages of This is a Library Book is a colourfully rendered and clever game board, accompanied by instructions from Grant that require up to four participants. In the “Where Can I Get a Book?” game, players flip coins to move small objects across a spread of squares of all designs and rainbow colours, landing on book-themed prompts such as “Your subway car in Seoul has a mini library. Go ahead two squares.” Grant and Nibbelink tag-team to conceptualize a fun and smart way to make reading a social activity as well as a solitary one.
When it comes to libraries in our present age, people in the local area have choices galore. The Hamilton Public Library has twenty-three branches and two bookmobiles spread out across the city. The City of Burlington has six public library branches currently operating: Central Branch, Aldershot Branch, Alton Branch, Brant Hills Branch, Kilbride Branch, and the New Appleby Branch, which opened on September 15, 2025. There are also Little Free Libraries scattered across both cities. Take time to research where the nearest ones are located.
This is a Library Book is currently available for pre-order on Amazon for $19.99. Check with local bookstores and, of course, local libraries for when the title will be available on the shelves.
