The race to victory
Alex Bell was inspired by an ancient Aesop’s fable.
At the University of Coimbra’s 300-year-old Joanina Library in Portugal, an unlikely species of librarian works to protect the books. Every night, bats emerge from the enormous bookcases and eat up the insects that love to destroy old paper and glue.
It was partly these brilliant bat bookkeepers that inspired the author Alex Bell to write a novel that centres around a library, she told
The Week Junior. That, and her love of libraries – from famous historic ones to the humble local library. “Old grand libraries are lovely to visit,” says Bell, “but you can’t touch the books.” Local libraries are fantastic for book lovers, she says.
In Bell’s new book, The Glorious Race of Magical Beasts, the main character, Eli, is a 12-year-old librarian at the largest library in the world, The Royal Library. This houses many precious books, including the first encyclopedia. “Eli is like me,” says Bell, “an awkward, bookish kid who just wanted to read quietly.” The character and the author also share a love of tortoises. When Bell was a child, she had a pet tortoise, and Eli’s sidekick is a magical moon tortoise called Humphrey.
“The obvious counter to a tortoise is a hare,” said Bell, referring to the famous and well-loved Aesop’s Fable The Hare and the Tortoise. This is a story from around
2,500 years ago, by an ancient Greek storyteller called Aesop. Although little is known about the origins of the story, its message of the overconfidence of the Hare versus the slow, deliberate progress of the humble Tortoise, has lasted. “Most people don’t have flashy lives,” says Bell. She adds that, like the Tortoise, people don’t have to be the best or come first in everything. By doing your best and moving forward – however slowly – you can still win in the end.