My guest this week is Lindsy Serrano, the librarian at St. Francis School in Goshen, Kentucky, where she works with preschoolers through eighth graders. She's a native of Buffalo, New York, and she spent several years working in the New York City Public Library system before moving to Kentucky.
We talked about two of her favorite books (one highbrow, one definitely not), her biracial background, and how her current job gave her the opportunity to meet her childhood hero.
On a map of her childhood neighborhood that she made in second grade:
"Across the street was Channel 17, the PBS station, which I used to walk over and hang out in front of because I thought LeVar Burton was working there. 'Reading Rainbow' was my life, and I even auditioned to be one of those kids that talk about books. He recently came to our school, and that was the best day of my life."
On her Puerto Rican and Italian heritage:
"When you're biracial, you kind of feel like you're going back and forth between the two. And a lot of times, in my experience, people tell me what I am before I can express myself in any way. For example, when I moved to New York, I would tell people, 'I'm Puerto Rican and Italian,' and people would say, 'Oh, you're not actually Puerto Rican, though,' because I didn't speak the language very well. So I ended up just telling people I was Italian, because it was easier than that conversation."
On her enduring love for Nora Roberts novels:
"I started reading them in college, just as a break from the tragedy of Caribbean post-colonial literature. I just wanted something a little bit more upbeat. And then I got a job in the library and I would be shelving books and then sneaking and just reading Nora Roberts in the stacks. I read them to this day, and I think because I like such cheesy romance novels, I have no judgment when kids come in and want certain books."
