written by Joel L Rane
illustrated by Raymond Pettibon & Cristin Sheehan Sullivan

This book resonates in many ways. I was never a librarian, but I am a Brooklynite who to this day carries his Brooklyn Library Card—and will never forget cutting his newspaperman’s teeth on mob-sponsored community newspapers that remain wellfed to this day. And I am also a fan of the Dick Riordan L.A. Library and all its vaults, nooks and crannies.

It is a bitter albeit hilarious, hateful yet hopeful, and brilliant book for its insider disclosure. Like teaching, working at a library is a career that requires complete exposure to a volatile element that is street life, gang members, rubber room rejects and all manner of danger—but pays remarkably little.

In Scream at the Librarian, we get a dictionary of mental delinquents that helps one to understand just what really happens.

It is scary, sad and bitter—but it may well be the last bit of limited art that one will be able to afford by a writer whose chapbook is illustrated by an artist whose work is found in most museums of modern art on the west coast. The faux quartercloth, letterset cover printing is a tangible aspect that makes the fingers tingle—right before the brain screams as the miscreants of the street trickle into the library on 5th Street.

(softcover, letterset press, $5: Booklyn, 37 Greenpoint Avenue, 4th Floor Brooklyn, NY 11222 www.booklyn.org)