40 Fun Facts About The Library Card (Jerry Spinelli)

In The Library Card, what color is the mysterious card that changes four young lives?

Blue is the color of the card that mysteriously appears in the life of each young person. It steers all four of them toward books.

In The Library Card, what does television-starved Brenda put in her mouth to pick up a signal?

A rabbit-ears antenna goes into her mouth after the family set is unplugged for a week. It is one of the desperate, comic moments before Brenda starts catching up on her life.

In The Library Card, what kind of vehicle does a teenage runaway hijack with April Mendez aboard?

A bookmobile is the target, and April Mendez comes across it while out on a hike. The angry, confused teenager behind the hijacking ends up as her friend.

In The Library Card, which crop grows on the farm that April Mendez's family moves to?

Mushrooms are the crop, and the move leaves April Mendez feeling isolated in the country. She is a city girl who loves books, which matters once a stranger crosses her path.

In The Library Card, where does the homeless boy Sonseray live while drifting from town to town?

In a car is where Sonseray lives, with no steady home and no lasting friends. Taking out a book finally gives him a refuge from loneliness.

In The Library Card, which friend pressures Mongoose into shoplifting and skipping school?

Weasel is the best friend leading Mongoose toward serious delinquency, and their crimes keep getting bigger. The card that keeps reappearing is what pulls Mongoose another way.

In The Library Card, which insect does Mongoose paint on the front of a building as his symbol?

A cicada is the strange bug Mongoose wants to know more about, and the question takes him into a library for the first time in his life.

Which earlier novel won Jerry Spinelli, author of The Library Card, the Newbery Medal?

Maniac Magee won the Newbery Medal in 1991. Publishers Weekly identified Spinelli by that single title when it reviewed The Library Card six years later.

In The Library Card, which week-long event cuts television addict Brenda off from her shows?

The Great TV Turn-Off leaves Brenda utterly lost for a week. Her struggle is played for broad comedy until the card leads her somewhere she never expected.

In The Library Card, what does Brenda find on the library shelves that tells of her early childhood?

Her own biography turns up in the library's biography section, and Brenda is fascinated by it. A message addressed to her guides her to the book.

In The Library Card, what is the title of the book a librarian hands to Mongoose on his first visit?

I Wonder is the book she gives him, and it holds far more than the bug he came to look up. Mongoose discovers a world of startling facts he never knew existed.

In Jerry Spinelli's The Library Card, what do Mongoose and his twelve-year-old best friend shoplift?

Candy is what the two boys shoplift, and from there their crimes grow to vandalism and graffiti. Mongoose leaves the mischief behind once books get hold of him.

In The Library Card, what does Mongoose's best friend do with the card when the two boys find it?

He tosses it away, yet the card keeps reappearing. Mongoose is the one who finally carries it into a library.

In The Library Card, what does Mongoose's best friend plan to do after dropping out of school?

Live on the streets is the plan, and it shows how far the friendship could drag Mongoose. He has to make a choice about where his own loyalties lie.

In The Library Card, how does television addict Brenda make her way to the library?

By sleepwalking is how she arrives, and what she reads there sets off a frantic search for the life she has lost to the screen.

In The Library Card, the pages about Brenda's life go empty right after which moment?

She first turns on a TV, and from that point the words abruptly end. Brenda becomes fiercely determined to fill in the rest herself.

In The Library Card, which library event brings the lonely, homeless Sonseray some comfort?

Story time is where Sonseray finds solace, and the woman who runs it has a surprise waiting for him.

In The Library Card, what kind of book helps Sonseray recapture memories of his dead mother?

A romance novel written for adults is what brings her back to him. Her death years earlier left a hole in his life that he had never managed to fill.

In The Library Card, which relative does Sonseray move from town to town with?

His uncle is the one Sonseray travels with, a homeless drifter. The man punishes the boy by holding back details about his late mother.

In The Library Card, where is April Mendez desperate to return after moving to the country?

New York City is the home she misses, and adjusting to a place so far from it is her battle. A chance meeting on the road brings her an unlikely friend.

In The Library Card, which ever-present smell is April Mendez escaping when she goes on a hike?

Horse manure is what the family's crop grows in, so the smell hangs over her whole home. The hike she takes to get away from it leads to a strange meeting.

In The Library Card, what is the name of the hijacker who becomes April Mendez's friend?

Nanette is the strange girl behind the attempted hijacking, and a shared interest in the card is what turns her and April into friends.

In The Library Card, how do April Mendez and the hijacker keep in touch before becoming friends?

By writing letters, the two keep up an uneasy correspondence that the card sets off. It eventually brings the city girl and the angry teenager together.

In Jerry Spinelli's The Library Card, what is unusual about the face of the card each child finds?

It is completely blank. Publishers Weekly found the device contrived but effective for showing how young people deal with hard circumstances.

Which publisher of The Library Card also issued a teachers' discussion guide to the book?

Scholastic brought the book out in 1997, and reviewers pitched it at readers of about eight to fourteen. Spinelli wrote for all four of these houses in the 1990s.

Which Jerry Spinelli novel about a town's pigeon shoot came out the same year as The Library Card?

Wringer follows Palmer, a boy who dreads turning ten because he will be expected to finish off wounded birds. It was named a Newbery Honor book.

Which Jerry Spinelli novel was adapted into a Disney+ film starring Grace VanderWaal?

Stargirl reached Disney+ in 2020, twenty years after the novel first appeared. Critics praised its message of nonconformity, and it became a bestseller.

Which book is Jerry Spinelli's memoir of growing up, published the year after The Library Card?

Knots in My Yo-Yo String carries the subtitle The Autobiography of a Kid. It has been described as a montage of sharply focused memories.

Which first children's book by Jerry Spinelli was originally written as a novel for adults?

Space Station Seventh Grade was his fifth novel, after earlier ones written for adults were all rejected. One of his children pilfering a snack he was saving inspired it.

In The Library Card, what is the real first name of the boy known as Mongoose?

Jamie is the name behind the nickname, and his is the first of the four stories. The card imposes itself on him before it reaches anyone else.

Which Jerry Spinelli historical novel follows an unnamed boy in wartime Warsaw?

Milkweed is set during the Holocaust, and its minor character Doctor Korczak is based on the real Janusz Korczak. Teachers often use the novel to open the subject.

In which state was Jerry Spinelli, author of The Library Card, born in the town of Norristown?

Pennsylvania is the setting of his fondest childhood memories, which fill the memoir he later wrote about growing up there.

Where did Jerry Spinelli edit the literary magazine The Mercury as a student?

Gettysburg College is where he spent his time writing short stories, and its special collections now hold his papers and manuscripts.

Jerry Spinelli, author of The Library Card, married Eileen Mesi, who is best known for what work?

Writing picture books is her trade: as Eileen Spinelli she has teamed up with illustrators on dozens of them. The couple married in 1977.

Which childhood dream job did Jerry Spinelli, author of The Library Card, hold until about age ten?

A cowboy was his first ambition, and after that the sports-mad boy set his heart on professional baseball. He grew up to edit a magazine before his books took off.

What did Jerry Spinelli write at sixteen about a football win that ran in the local newspaper?

A poem was his first published work, and his father sent it to the paper without telling him. Around then he gave up on a baseball career and chose writing.

Which baseball position did Jerry Spinelli once hope to play for the Yankees?

Shortstop was the dream, though he was a hopeful only in his own mind. He became a father of a large family and an author of dozens of books instead.

Which goofy, awkward optimist is the hero of Loser, a later novel by Jerry Spinelli?

Donald Zinkoff slides from class clown to class outcast as he moves up to middle school, yet his healthy optimism never cracks. One reviewer called the book a masterful character portrait.

At which point in the working day did Jerry Spinelli write fiction while holding down ordinary jobs?

His lunch break was writing time, along with weekends and the hours after dinner. He kept that routine going through some two decades of normal day jobs.

Which writer, bought for an evening at auction, introduced Jerry Spinelli to editors at Elaine's?

George Plimpton told the story himself: two months after the dinner, Spinelli wrote to announce that his first book was being published.