WOMEN LIBRARIAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 May 1938, Page 5

WOMEN LIBRARIAN

JOBS EXCHANGED. Two young women who live more than 6000 miles apart have exchanged jobs and flats without ever seeing each other. They are children’s librarians who have been granted leave of absence by their councils to take their specialised knowledge to each other’s towns. One is dark, petite Miss Gwendoline M. Hunt, librarian-in-charge of East Ham Central Junior Library, London; and the other is Miss L. Elizabeth Taylor, fair, six-foot chief of the children's department at Johannesburg Library. “It seems very strange to be handing over to someone I shall probably never see, my 3000 children, my work and my living quarters,” Miss Hunt told a "News-Chronicle” (London) reporter. She finds that girls and boys progress from six to 14 through three stages: “Talking animal” and fairy tales, school stories and contemporary adventure stories.

Then girls take up the “love” novel, while boys remain faithful to the adventure story. But the most popular book of all, among girls and boys alike, is the story about a likeable'boy who gets into one mischievous scrape after the other while holding his own with grownups.