by Burkely Hermann

What if I told you that there was an all-ages animated series where a special and magnificent library was so central, it even surprised the series creator? There is such a show-Nickelodeon’s Welcome to the Wayne, created by Billy Lopez. It features a library that exemplifies the series’ quirkiness.

The role of the library in the show goes beyond positive depictions of libraries and librarians in recent years in animated series such as Too Loud, Mira, Royal Detective, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Hilda, and Cleopatra in Space. In Welcome to the Wayne, the chief librarian of a magical library, called the Stanza, is a Black woman named Clara Rhone-one of very few librarians of color in popular culture). She is voiced by Harriett D. Foy. In the first season, the library and its non-human employees are central to the series, a theme continued in the second season, emphasizing the value of libraries as places of knowledge, and understanding.

In the show’s first episode, one of the three protagonists, Saraline, is unable to find the secret library in her apartment complex, the Wayne. Her friend and new apartment resident, Ansi Molina, stumbles upon the library by accident, as he tries to retrieve his John Keats book taken by a squidlike creature he nicknames John Keats. In the meticulously organized library, which contains information on the inhabitants of the Wayne, he meets Clara, who is re-shelving books. While she is unsuccessful in getting Ansi to become a library member, he later helps her shelve books and uses a magic guardrail to travel to various parts of the library. Information from the library helps Ansi aid his friends and sets in motion coming adventures, like getting a shiny, and strange, card.

The second episode begins with the library. Ansi’s new friend, Julia Wilds, travels with Saraline and her brother, Olly, to the library, as they continue to try to unravel the mysteries of the Wayne. While Julia appears to be overwhelmed, Team Timbers (Saraline, Olly, and Ansi) are successful in fending off the mysterious masked man, Tony Stanza, keeper of the Stanza archives, who is trying to seize a card Ansi received from the library in the previous episode. Despite the fact he appears to be a villain, near the end of the episode, Tony surprisingly Olly and Saraline cards of their own, telling both of them, and Ansi, to return their cards before “time runs out.” This sets in motion the events of the next episode.

Eight episodes later, in episode 12, a new character, a vampire named Andrei, is informed that his book is overdue and that he must return it. He and Team Timbers follow a creature to the library that snatched his book. The episode that follows highlights the issues of underfunded libraries and the value of knowledge, even as they fight off a library ninja voiced by Charnele Crick. Clara sends the ninja to kill the vampire, because vampires attacked residents in the Wayne in the past, and drive Team Timbers out of the library. As the whole library mobilizes against Team Timbers, the ninja, who happens to be Clara’s granddaughter, is trapped between card catalogs. Andrei uses his superhuman strength and agility to save her. At one point, Olly jokes that the catalogs are attacking them because they are “angry about being replaced by the internet” as he continues to film everything for a viral video. The role of librarians as gatekeepers is emphasized when Clara warns Team Timbers that if they leave with Andrei, they can never return. Ansi, who loves the library, accepts this, even as he later laments his inability to access the library as a result.

A few episodes after this, the library ninja helps Team Timbers and introduces herself as Goodness, officially becoming part of the team defending the Wayne from evil forces. In the show’s 19th episode, Goodness and Saraline break into the library, catching a creature that looks like a running nose and spot Clara shelving books. In the season one finale, Clara offers her help to the eight-person team of protagonists, which has expanded beyond the original members of Team Timbers to form what is known as the Gyre.

In the show’s second and final season, Saraline describes the library as one of the quietest places in the Wayne in one episode; this library is also where her friend Annacile/the Arcsine goes to find out who has received her magical powers. A few episodes later, the show emphasizes the importance of the library as a quiet place for contemplation and study. Katherine Alice travels with Goodness to the library, with Clara shushing Goodness, telling her to use her “Stanza voice.” While this corresponds with the shushing librarian stereotype, Clara makes up for this by showing them the Wayne Cyclodex, a book that records “everything that has ever happened” in the Wayne. This book becomes central in the episodes that follow, her words becoming a warning to those in the Gyre. In the penultimate episode of the series, the characters briefly return to the library, which is described as a place where time stands still, before they enter a trap set by the show’s villains. While the characters do not travel to the library in the final episode, Clara is briefly possessed by rainbow gas and is shown, in the ending montage of the episode, doing exercises on the balcony of her room in the Wayne.

Although the series ran from 2017 to 2019 and likely will not return in the future, all 30 episodes can be purchased online. This short-lived but memorable series makes clear the value of libraries and librarians to society, as places of knowledge and diversity, more than most animated series.

Subscribe to the I Love Libraries newsletter for more great library stories.

Animated series such as Hilda, Cleopatra in Space, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power have portrayed libraries in a positive light; Too Loud, a 16-episode, two-season animated comedy web series on YouTube, is another great example of libraries in animation. Created by Nico Colaleo, the series focuses on two clumsy and loud volunteers at the Chestertown Public Library somewhere in the Western United States: Sara (voiced by Kelsey Abbott) and Jeffrey (voiced by Colaleo), with abnormally large heads, have fun even while they do their jobs. The show has already garnered a wiki, fan art, and a loyal group of fans. While the show is geared toward children, viewers of all ages can enjoy its message about the value of libraries.

In the first two episodes of season one, the so-called “loud mouth librarians,” Sara, and her brother, Jeffrey, help patrons: Sara uses her huge cranium to find a book on an obscure topic, while Jeffrey licks a library card to discern whether a book is overdue. Both explain the personal importance of helping library patrons, saying it brightens their day. In the second episode, both work together to save the library from being shut down by the town’s mayor. In later episodes, they meet friends in the library, with Jeffrey using the size of head to give a sci-fi author an idea for a new book, breaking his writer’s block, and a new librarian named Sarah is introduced.

Although the library is not shown as many times in the second season, the show emphasizes the library’s value to the community over and over again. In the third episode of the season, Sara is overwhelmed with her library duties and joins a group of “bad girls.” But when they approach the library and prepare to egg it, she remembers the positive memories and experiences she had there and tells the girls to leave. Afterward, Jeffrey and the head librarian, Mrs. Mildred Abbott, thank Sara for her hard work, saying they appreciate her efforts. In the fifth episode of the season, on the 100^th anniversary of the library, Mildred’s twin and the chancellor of the libraries, Muriel, declares that the library will be sold off so the area can become a parking lot, all due to a long-standing grudge against her sister. The usual patrons are horrified by this, as are Jeffrey and Sara. Just in time, they help bring the two sisters together, and they reconcile, saving the library from destruction.

Other episodes highlight the importance of libraries and proper organization. In one episode in particular, the story centers on the Jeffrey and Sara picking up overdue library books and punishing those responsible is emphasized.  They convince a skeptical Sarah, a fellow librarian, to help them break into someone’s house to get an overdue book, but in truth Jeffrey had the book the whole time, for over eight years, and had forgotten to re-shelve it. After the person’s house collapses when they grab the book, all three of them learn that being punitive with those who have overdue books is not worth it.

The same can be said for an episode where Jeffrey and Sara travel deep into the library’s stacks to search for their friend, Molly, and find their long-lost cousin, Steven, who had been stranded there. In this abandoned part of the library, which has not been touched since the 1980s, there is even a VHS rental section!

Due to their role in the library, Sara and Jeffrey, along with their new colleague Sarah, are valued by those in the community. For example, in one episode, after Sara and Jeffrey get head reduction surgery, they have trouble doing their jobs, and ordinary patrons miss the usual banter of Sara and Jeffrey. It turns out this is a nightmare and both vow to never change the size of their “big, glorious heads” for anyone.

Even Mildred, the head librarian, bucks librarian stereotypes in several ways. At first, viewers may see the older white woman with glasses as dotty and clueless. For instance, she buys a burned sign for $100 dollars to eat in one episode, and is unsure how to answer reference calls from patrons. However, she has institutional knowledge dating back to the founding of the library, which her father built and founded. She helps Jeffrey, Sara, and Sarah with their duties from time to time and values their work at the library. Since the series is focused on Jeffrey and Sara and those who interact with them, she does not appear as much, but she adds an interesting dimension to the series.

While showrunner Nico Colaleo has proposed ideas for a third season, the season has been on an extended hiatus since November 2019-but viewers are still discovering the show and enjoying its depiction of libraries to this day. Even as the library’s size and layout differs from episode to episode, Colaleo has shared designs of the library on his Twitter account, including new angles of the library and the rainy day version of the library’s exterior, and a poster of a pop star promoting literacy displayed in one of the episodes. Hopefully, the series will be renewed, as having a show centered around libraries, like this one, would be a boon for representation of libraries and librarians in animation.

Subscribe to the I Love Libraries newsletter for more great stories.

When people think about librarians and libraries, they may point to films, live-action TV shows, or even novels. However, one area is often missed: animation. In Hollywood, stereotypes are plentiful, as librarians are used as “shortcuts to propel the plot forward,” in the words of Jennifer Snoek-Brown, author of the Reel Librarians blog. While this generally applies to animation as well, two recent shows buck those stereotypes, depicting libraries and librarians positively.

The first of these shows is Cleopatra in Space, loosely based on Mike Maihack’s graphic novel series and currently streaming on Peacock. The show follows teenage princess Cleo, who has been transported 30,000 years through time and space from Ancient Egypt into the Nile Galaxy. Wrestling with the newfound responsibility of being the “savior of the galaxy” prophesied to defeat the evil tyrant Octavian, she attends an Egyptian-themed futuristic high school on the planet of Mayet to hone her skills. While Octavian has destroyed most of the recorded knowledge available in the galaxy, Cleo’s school library still contains vital information. In the show’s third episode, Cleo travels to the school library after hours with her mentor Khensu, and two of her friends, Akila and Brian. Khensu shows her to the library’s Ancient Egypt section, with only a few physical records contained in a trunk, all accessible in holographic form. (In real life, these artifacts would be housed in a library’s special collections.) This positive depiction is possibly offset by what Cleo does next: dismayed by the lack of records about her homeland, she thinks about her dad, floats in the air, glows pink, then sucks all the electricity of the school and nearby city into her body, causing a massive power outage. The message of this moment is that libraries need adequate resources and support to assist the communities they serve-otherwise there will be information deficits which put patrons at a disadvantage. Libraries are also mentioned throughout the series as a beloved hangout space for one of the main characters. Akila likes to spend her time in the library studying and insists “all the cool students” spend time there too in the show’s 12th episode. In some ways, Akila reminds me a bit of myself in college: while in college, I extensively used the well-endowed campus library to study, research, and relax, even when some of my friends disliked it.

Cleopatra in Space characters study in their school library.

Another animated show, the recently concluded Netflix series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, prominently features librarians in a few episodes. The season two finale focuses around two middle-aged gay Black librarians, George and Lance, and their library in a magical forest called the Whispering Woods. This portrayal contrasts with the original 1980s series, She-Ra: Princess of Power, where a stereotypical elderly white long-haired librarian aids the protagonists. George and Lance are fathers to Bow, one of the show’s protagonists; in the episode, Bow and his friends, Adora and Glimmer, work together with the librarians to translate an ancient message. Their efforts inadvertently release an elemental monster into the library, and in the havoc that ensues, Bow reluctantly reveals his true identity as an expert archer and rebellion fighter, a secret he has long concealed to his dads. While he expects his dads will rebuke him, they embrace him instead, accepting him for who he is-many viewers see this storyline as echoing family coming-out stories from the LGBTQ+ community. In the 10th episode of the show’s final season, Bow and Glimmer reconnect with the two librarians. Both recount their discoveries: an ancient rebellion against the planet’s first settlers and the existence of a fail-safe for the superweapon in the planet’s core. This information becomes vitally important in the effort by the show’s protagonists to stop the world (and universe) from being destroyed, setting the stage for the groundbreaking kiss in the final episode. On the whole, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power shows librarians as helpful, welcoming, and diverse, a refreshing antidote to more stereotypical media about libraries, which is all too common, even in animated series.

While these are only two examples, there are many more which I am continually reviewing on my blog, Libraries in Popular Culture. If you have any suggestions for popular media about or featuring libraries or librarians, feel free to email me at bhermann@mail.com.

Subscribe to the I Love Libraries newsletter for more fascinating stories about libraries and librarians.