I had already read That Book Woman once before reading it aloud to my class today. But I choked up on the last page again anyway.

“‘Wish there was something I could gift you too.’

That Book Woman turns to look at me with big dark eyes. ‘Come here, Cal,’ she says real gentle, and I come close. “Read me something.’

I open up a book I’m holding, a new one brought this very day . . . and I read a little out. 

‘That’s gift enough,’ she says, and smiles so big, it makes me smile right back.”

Cal and his family “live way up as up can get” in the mountains of Kentucky, “the onliest school a jillion miles back down the creek.” There is plenty of work to do, and Cal has no use for reading, though his sister Lark would have her nose between the pages of a book all day if their mother would let her. 

One day, a woman wearing britches rides up to the house with a saddlebag full of books. Lark acts like it’s a bag full of treasure. Call refuses to be impressed. 

She comes one night when the family is huddled around the fireplace while “the wind shrieks like a bobcat,” and “even the critters of the wild will keep a-hid come snow like this.” 

Cal decides he has to know what’s in those books that makes the Book Woman risk catching cold, or worse. He asks his sister to teach him to read. And “that’s gift enough.”

David Small’s illustration style is perfect for this story, with attenuated characters suggesting people stretched to their limit. 

The Author’s Note begins: “This story was inspired by the true and courageous work of the Pack Horse Librarians, who were known as ‘Book Women” in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky.”

That Book Woman is available at Amazon.

You can find more information on this book at biblioguides.com.

Down Cut Shin Creek: The Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky, published by Purple House Press, is listed in That Book Woman as a resource for learning more about the Pack Horse Library Project of Eastern Kentucky.