Library on Wheels: Mary Lemist Titcomb and America’s First Bookmobile

This handsomely designed, well-researched biography pays homage to Mary Titcomb, librarian and founder of the first bookmobile in the U.S. From a poor New Hampshire family, Titcomb doesn’t take no for an answer as she pursues her education and then delivers books to a large rural Maryland population in 1905. Her library’s first horse-drawn book wagon is mistaken for a “dead wagon” until she has the wheels and door panels painted a “bright, cheery red to avoid any confusion with a hearse.” Numerous black-and-white photographs, articles, letters, postcards, and other archival documents are combined in scrapbooklike assemblages on goldenrod, blue, and antique white pages. The back matter includes a photographic timeline of bookmobiles through the decades, as well as a lengthy author’s note explaining how Glenn (Just What Mama Needs) worked to secure a headstone for Titcomb’s unmarked grave in the same Sleepy Hollow cemetery where several famous New England authors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, lie buried. A select bibliography and index are also included. Ages 8–12. (Apr.)