Mother Goose, Spud and the Librarian Knights: Representations of librarians and their libraries in modern children's fiction.

The article investigates the ways in which libraries and librarians are portrayed in children's fiction. Three example texts are used to determine whether the portrayal of the library and the librarian in modern children's fiction provides children with a positive image of the service, and to identify the ways in which such fiction can teach children about library use. The importance of reading undertaken in childhood cannot be underestimated. It provides a foundation for the acquisition of knowledge as well as for a love of reading for pleasure, and the strength of this foundation depends not only on the encouragement children receive from teachers and parents, but also on the work of those who write and illustrate books for children. Despite the importance of developing reading skills, recent statistics show that issues of children's books from public libraries in Great Britain have fallen by 22.3 million. Over the last five years or so, however, an increasing number of children's books have been published in which the library is portrayed in an altogether more positive light.