Dear Miss Breed ...

A role model for librarians!

Joanne Oppenheim's Dear Miss Breed is a book about a children librarian who devoted her self to the Japanese American children and made a difference to the lives of them. Clara Breed was the children librarian at San Diego Public Library when the Japanese Americans were sent to the concentration camps in 1940s. She kept correspondence with her young incarceration library patrons. In doing so she gave the children a way of keeping connection with the “outside” (outside the camp) world. She also sent them library donated books.

This book is a collection of her letters along with articles, photographs, and other primary materials integrated by the author. As a librarian, I highly recommend this book for all librarians and future librarians to remind us the role of a librarian.