To the brightest little star: being an account of the Great First Grade Book War of 1979
On the first day of of Banned Books Week, we present the epic saga of one first grader’s quest to read a school library book and the beloved teacher who fought for her.
When I was seven years old, I started a war. I didn’t mean to, but I’m glad I did. It was The Great Book War of my first-grade year.
As a kid, I loved school. Doing well in the classroom — well, be honest, showing off in the classroom — earned me the self-esteem that I didn’t have at home. So on Mrs. Claudia Peebler’s very first day as a teacher, I jumped at the chance to shine for her. Back then, most kids learned to read in the first grade, but I’d already taught myself in kindergarten. So when Mrs. Peebler asked if anyone could try to sound out a short poem up on the blackboard, guess who raised her hand, stood right up, and read the whole thing off perfectly?
From that moment on, Mrs. Peebler had a special eye on me. She made it her goal to nurture and challenge my hungry mind, and I loved it. I loved her.
The Great Book War started in our school library. I found a book called “Betsy’s Little Star,” about a four-year-old who desperately wants to go to real school with her big sister. Wow... a little girl with talent and ambition beyond her years, blocked by society’s bourgeois rules? I felt that deep in my seven-year-old soul. I took the book right up to the checkout desk.
Enter our story’s antagonist: the school librarian, Mrs. Fanny Meek. Yes, that was her real name, and she almost deserved it. Mrs. Meek was somewhere between 80 and death. She was a real old-school librarian who insisted on absolute silence in her room — a tall order for a bunch of rambunctious grade-schoolers.
Mrs. Meek took “Betsy’s Little Star” from me and set it on the desk behind her.
“You can’t read this one.”
Well, clearly, I had just been reading it. So I told her, “Yes, I can.”
Mrs. Meek looked down at me through her bifocals. “Really? What’s it about?”
Aha ... a chance to show off my reading skills! I told her the plot, and I can’t pretend I wasn’t a little smug about it. I had called her bluff. I could read that book, and I’d just proven it to her big old librarian face. She had to give it to me now, right?
Wrong. She put it under her desk. “Go pick something else.”
….Oh. When she said “You can’t.” she didn’t mean not able — she meant not allowed. As a child, I had no leverage against that kind of adult authority.
So I went to someone who did.
Mrs. Peebler — champion of the first grade — escorted me back to the checkout desk.
“She can read this,” Mrs. Peebler said.
“No, she can’t,” said Mrs. Meek.“
Yes. She can.”
Mrs. Meek just looked at us. “It’s fifth-grade level.”
“So?”
“It’s April. School’s almost over. She’ll never finish it in time.”
“Then I’ll check it out for her to read in class,” Mrs. Peebler countered smoothly. Zing!
Beaten by solid logic, Fanny Meek fell back on the last resort of the petty tyrant: brute authority.
“I said no. She can’t read it.”
I don’t remember the exact argument that followed; I just remember being really impressed. Mrs. Peebler was mad. She never got angry in class, but right now she was absolutely furious ... at another adult. Never in my life had a grown-up stood up for me, and certainly not to another grown-up. When Claudia Peebler took a stand in that Swaney Elementary School library, she taught me something so much more important than reading or science or math: She taught me that I was a person worth fighting for.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t check out “Betsy’s Little Star.” But the gift Mrs. Peebler gave me that day was better than all the library books in the world.
Several decades later, I got back in touch with her, and she was every bit as delightful as I remembered.
“You were always so bright,” she told me. “I don’t know if you remember that library book,” she began, and then I said it with her: “‘Betsy’s Little Star!’” We re-lived the whole story of The Great Book War, and then she shocked me with a detail I didn’t know: After school that day, she snuck back into the library to kidnap that book for me. Claudia Peebler: book ninja! But when she got there, “Betsy’s Little Star” wasn’t on the shelf, or the checkout desk, or the return cart. The book was gone. Mrs. Meek had hidden it to keep it out of the hands of a first-grade child.
Give the woman points for stealth, I guess. But know this: the Fanny Meeks of the world may win the battle, but the Mrs. Peeblers will always win the war.
A few months after our reunion, Mrs. Peebler and I went out to lunch. With a twinkle in her eye, she said, “I’ve got something for you,” and pulled out a brand-new paperback copy of “Betsy’s Little Star.” Her personal inscription always cheers me up on a bad day, and from the very first time I read it, I knew that The Great Book War had come to its final, decisive, victorious end:
“To the brightest little star in my first year of teaching, Mrs. P. to Fanny — WE Won!!”
Melissa Reed is an alumnus of Swaney Elementary School in Derby. She co-founded The Badass Babes Writer's Group in Wichita, and her stories have appeared (under her alter ego Q) in anthologies by Big Finish Productions and Obverse Books. She also really likes trees.
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