When I learned that retired Children’s Librarian Nancy Bonne had passed away I was shocked and deeply saddened. She was my mentor and friend and I will miss her far more than words can express. In that I am far from alone. Nancy was the sort of person who not only made lots of friends, but consistently went the extra mile for them. Sometimes she went the extra thousand miles. I was not at all surprised to hear that her final days were spent in Sikkim, India at the Taktse International School volunteering in the school’s library and visiting with good friends.
I first met Nancy something close to twenty-four years ago. I was at the time one of a quartet of high-school-aged Pages employed by the Beverly Public Library. My cohorts and I shelved books all over the library and occasionally manned the adult checkout desk. The Children’s Room was, at that time, up on the library’s third floor where the adult Fiction stacks are today. Nancy would have to come downstairs every so often to fetch carts full of children’s books that had been returned or one of us would bring them up and help put them back on the shelves. It was on one of her trips down to get the book-cart that our friendship began.
I was there at the desk on a quiet summer evening checking in books and Nancy was about to take her cart upstairs when she stopped and thrust a picture book at me. “Read that” she said with a twinkle in her eyes. “Read it right now.”
The book in question was Avocado Baby by John Burningham. To this day that book remains one of my very favorite children’s books. I laughed so hard the first time I read that book and I still laugh every time I read it. Nancy fed me a steady diet of very best children’s books in that way. She would turn up, book in hand, and say to me, “Read that.” I’d be willing to bet she did that exact same thing to thousands of children over the years.
Nancy had a truly vast knowledge of children’s books. It was a rare day that anyone could stump her. Ask anyone on the Children’s Room staff and they will tell you the same. A person would come in with a vague memory of a really good book he or she had read as a child. “It was about little sailboats and one might have been named after an animal of some sort,” the person would say. “Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome,” Nancy would declare. And she would be right. I even once heard a woman tell Nancy that there was a book she was looking for that was sort of old and had a red cover. I am still completely mystified as to how Nancy knew from that little description what book it was, but she did.
Nancy made an incredible number of friends of all ages over the years I knew her. She befriended Aka and Pintso Lauenstein and their parents when the boys were just children. It was through them that Nancy became involved with the Taktse International School. She boxed up old and damaged books that had been weeded from the library’s children’s collection (books that would have otherwise been thrown away) and packed them up to ship to India because the children at her friends’ school needed books to read.
I know from dozens of conversations how much she loved that school and how very much she wanted to visit India and see the library she had helped stock and meet the children. Her first trip there with her daughter and grandsons was an experience she absolutely treasured. She couldn’t mention the experience without grinning from ear to ear. I didn’t know that she planned to visit again, but as I said I am not surprised. I am glad that the children of Taktse got the opportunity to meet her. I am glad that so many of Beverly’s children knew her. But I for one am really going to miss hearing her say, “Read this.”
by Linda Furey, Assistant Children’s Librarian
Please feel free to share your memories of Nancy with us in the comments section on our page and in the Children’s Room at the main library.
One of the teachers who worked at the Taktse International School has written a lovely piece on her blog in memory of Nancy Bonne complete with wonderful photos like the one to the left. You can find it here.
I will always remember the warmth she showed my children when we moved to Rockport in 1980.
We arrived from Michigan, and the initiation process was very difficult for 2 of my children.
Nancy was kind and encouraging. I was very grateful she was there for them. Nancy was a familiar sight in Rockport. When she was not in the school, I remember her as walking thoughtfully through town with her trademark backpack, always with a ready smile.
My daughter Eileen still speaks fondly of Mrs Bonne, and she will be very saddened to hear of her death.
I know I am.
What a lady.
This is a wonderful memory of Nancy! I am trying to remember when I first met her but I know it was fairly soon after beginning my work with NMRLS. So I would say early 1999! I just remember her graciousness, her enthusiasm, her childish wonder. And her smile – that’s easy to remember.
My thoughts are with her direct family as well as her extended Beverly family.
Nancy, we miss you!
And so many memories:
Nancy coming out of the storyhour room with tears in her eyes after reading “Silver Packages” by Cynthia Rylant at Christmas time or “Goin’ Someplace Special” by Patricia McKissack at any old time. Two of her lump-in-the-throat favorites!
Nancy playing her violin in the hallway offices while I read “Mole Music” by David McPhail with the storyhour room door just ajar. The kids thought the music was coming from the book (or did they?). A magical moment that no one wanted to truly investigate. Not a one of those preschoolers even thought to fully open that door.
Those memories, those stories, those words and that music will live on!
Whenever I think of the cat in the hat, I see Nancy in that role with the striped hat and round glasses for Dr Seuss’s 100th birthday at the library. It just worked. She is the children’s librarian I always wanted to be!