Ask the librarian: Dave Ewick

Today’s Ask the Librarian is the first in-person interview I did. Mom wrote the answers for me but I asked Dave the questions!

Name: Dave Ewick ( kind of like Ewok)

Library: Southfield Public Library (check out the silly video they did below)

How long have you been a librarian: 36 years

What kind of librarian are you: Director – that means I don’t get to work with the people directly. I hire people, pay the bills, figure out the budget… so like the boss

One of my first jobs was as a children’s librarian

What lead you to wanting to be a librarian? I didn’t really want to be a librarian. I wanted to be a teacher. But my dad was a librarian and my mom was a librarian.  Dad said I wouldn’t make much money as a teacher. He also said I would be a good librarian.

How do you pick books for your library? I don’t get to pick them. Others do it. I can give them ideas. I read magazines. Sometimes I look around the bookstore. Sometimes I look on the internet. If I meet an author and they are real cool, I suggest them. [Here I asked if his library had Salina Yoon (Yes, a whole shelf) and Mike Maihack (yes, they do, but Dave hadn’t read it yet)]

Do you have a favorite author? Patrick Rothfuss and Neil Gaiman [Here Dave shared he has been waiting 2.5yrs for the next book in a series and we discussed how hard it is to wait]

How do you decide what book to recommend to a child? If it is funny, if it has neat pictures, if it has a neat story [here we shared a love of The Book with No Pictures]

Since I was at Dave’s library, I asked him some of the highlights. It has a lot of cool artwork and a really big children’s area.

• Mark Twain statue
• Boy & Bear statue
• Cat in the Hat statue
• Slumber, the sleeping & snoring dragon
• Big reading chair
• Imaginarium Garden
• Storytelling room with a space theme
• Board Room

I also asked Dave about Celebrity Readers. My mom knows him through this program as she is a celebrity reader. Per Dave, they are adults who go to elementary schools in Southfield and read to the kids. The adults talk about their jobs and then read a book or two. They can go once or like my mom, go to the same class every month of the school year. My mom says she likes doing it because the kids are really happy to see her and make her feel like a celebrity. I think it sounds like a cool thing.