Miss Moore Thought Otherwise: How Anne Carroll Moore Created Libraries for Children
by Jan Pinborough; 
illus. by Debby Atwell
Primary    Houghton    40 pp.
3/13    978-0-547-47105-1    $16.99

Nowadays, Anne Carroll Moore is remembered as the fiercest of the library ladies whose influence on children’s library service and publishing was both inspirational and — sometimes — intractable. But this easygoing picture-book biography forgoes coverage of the more formidable aspects of Moore’s personality, giving us instead a simple narrative of Moore’s Maine childhood and early love of books on through to her career at the New York Public Library, where she created the innovative Central Children’s Room for the library’s new main building in 1911. With sun-dappled acrylic paintings of, first, rural Maine and, later, triumphantly, the light-filled interiors of the new Children’s Room, the tone here is one of uncomplicated optimism, reflecting Moore’s practical idealism. A bird’s-eye view of Miss Moore setting off on her “retirement” travels spreading the gospel of children’s librarianship across the land clearly places this apostle in the company of her (fictional) Maine sister, Miss Rumphius. “More about Miss Moore” and a list of sources are appended.

From the March/April 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.