The Library in the Woods

After a storm devastates the farm his parents have been renting, Junior moves with his family to Roxboro, North Carolina. The year is 1959, and the nine-year-old boy has to navigate the realities of the segregated South while adjusting to life in town. Instead of farming, his father works at the lumberyard, and his mother takes in laundry from the white people in town. Junior meets new friends who have a TV—and their own books! These new friends offer to take Junior to the library, and he’s surprised to discover that in a clearing in the forest, there’s a log cabin that houses a library for Black residents.

The library in the woods feels magical, giving Junior a sense of possibility and community. The books he checks out also help him uncover a secret he never knew about his father.

This fictional account is based on a real-life library author Calvin Alexander Ramsey frequented as a child. Ramsey’s heartfelt text, accompanied by illustrations from award-winning artist R. Gregory Christie, celebrates family, libraries, and the resourcefulness of the Black community.