LIVERPOOL — You can say that Laurel Sharp was born with the librarian gene.
“I’m second generation,” the children’s and family services librarian says during a recent conversation in her upstairs cubicle in the Liverpool Public Library building at the corner of Tulip and Second streets.
Her mom, Jean Sharp, was a librarian at the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library in Midland, Michigan, she says.
Yes, she recalls, there were story times at that “nice, new library. They were formal, for older children. I was 6 or 7. They were storytelling, really, not reading from books,” she recalls.
But they took.
And, soon enough, Laurel was the sixth-grade class librarian at Sugnet Elementary. “I liked it. A lot,” she says.
The attraction of books and libraries lingered, through her four years as an English major at Oakland University, and the one year it took her to get her Master of Library Science at the University of Michigan, in 1972. They offered one computer course, she recalls, and she didn’t take it.
Might have done her good, she says, with a little laugh.
“I did take a children’s literature course,” she says.
Yes, that did pay off. First stop, at the Stoughton Public Library in Massachusetts. Then three years at the Boston Public Library. Then a Boston branch. Learning, discovering, moving on to exciting things.
At the Swamp Scott Library, next to the ocean north of Boston, she bought a lobster at the supermarket, brought it work and used it as a centerpiece while reading a story to the kids. Afterward they all walked to the beach, where she let the lobster loose.
“It was happy,” she says. “It scooted off.”
She liked that relationship with the kids.
“I thought that would be my last job,” she says.
But that need for new adventures took her and husband to Central New York, and she started working as a librarian at the Liverpool Public Library in 1986.
Ms. Laurel will preside over her final Sing Along Friends Story Time at 10 a.m. Thursday, May 27, on the LPL’s Dinosaur Garden lawn. It will also be presented on Facebook Live at facebook.com/LiverpoolPublicLibrary.
Generations of community members have gathered around to watch and listen to her words and ideas. She’s played the guitar. She’s sang. She’s led them in circles, in and out the blanket of her big parachute. Her sessions have been a hit in the Carman Community Room and Sargent Meeting Room in the library, in community partner Studio One on First Street and outside next to the Wegmans Playground in Onondaga Lake Park. During the trying year of the pandemic, her sessions were moved online thanks to Zoom, Facebook and YouTube. Her son, Zeke, who grew up to become a page at the LPL, became a side player guitarist and singer for her sessions.
Oh, how those 35 years have enriched so many.
“Pony Boy, Pony Boy,” Sharp sings, sitting in her cubicle space. “I liked that one. We’d make the paper bag Pony Boy and a 3- or 4-year-old would fit in it and the kids would gallop around in those ponies.”
Sharp also started the popular Tie-Dye on the Lawn summer event.
“That was extravagant,” she says. “We started off with 25 patrons the first year and were thrilled. Then we got hundreds. We hope that comes back after COVID.”
Also a favorite was the Build a Box program. We provide the cardboard; kids provide the creativity.
“I think I’ll come to that as a civilian because it sounds like fun,” Sharp says. “We did some renovations and saved the big boxes.”
Yes, Sharp says, she’ll be a little sad come May 27.
But …
“I think it’s a great privilege. It’s amazing how kids warm up to the stories,” she says. “The role of the library is to make it fun. And to make it fun for each kid. To spark every kid’s interest. Not just in books. Maybe get them to check out that ukulele. Because the library is such a vital resource.”
You can check out an interview with Laurel Sharp on our YouTube channel and our Facebook page.
