Gabriela Magnuson is all business. You can tell by the way she forgets herself and starts speaking in the voice of a fictional dog named Martha, or how proud she is of the plastic badge around her neck that reads: "Library Detective: In Books We Trust."
She is the new children's librarian at Garden City Library, and she does not take her responsibilities lightly - including leading a room full of kids and parents singing and dancing wildly to "Itsy Bitsy Spider."
"Some of the parents stand there and look at me like, 'I'm not going to do this,' " she said as she laughed. "I tell them there's no person in the room sillier than me."
It takes just the right mix of silly and savvy to spend half your time working with kids and the other half promoting literacy in a community that is still getting to know its own library. Magnuson started going to the Garden City Library 10 years ago when it was on 50th Street and followed it to a strip mall on Chinden Boulevard and finally to its permanent home off of Glenwood next to the Boise River. She has been a patron, a volunteer, a teacher, an event planner, a book buyer and an innovative program director, infusing her work with the richness of her Mexican heritage.
Born and raised the fourth of five children in Mexico City, Magnuson attended private, bilingual schools from kindergarten through high school. She credits her father for pushing her to excel.
"He always said when he died he wouldn't give us any money because he had already given us an education. That was his legacy," she said.
Magnuson saw that legacy through to the University of Kansas, where she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in art history. After moving to Boise with her husband in 1996, she taught Spanish at Boise State and started a family, including Ben, 8, and twins, Emma and Erik, 7.
"After I had my kids I became a huge library user," she said. "It was the one place I felt I could always go."
Spending time at the Garden City Library introduced Magnuson to other mothers who spoke Spanish. She organized a bilingual playgroup and eventually approached children's librarian Diane Matejka-Lund about starting a weekly program. There was surprising interest. Every week, the playgroup grew until it became Bilingual Storytime, and Magnuson was asked to organize it every Friday.
She agreed to work five hours a week, but as things came up, she wore more hats and logged more hours. Five became 10, 15 and 19 as Magnuson worked more and more with subsequent children's librarian Melody Eisler. And when Eisler left last year, library director Lisa Zeiter knew there was only one woman for the job.
"Gaby knows this place better than most of us, and she is also a go-getter and extremely well-connected in the community," Zeiter said. "She's bright and charming and she's not shy. She's the full package deal, and she knows how to find people's strengths and exploit them."
Two of those people, Christine Dwello and Sammy Samuelson, are part of the team Magnuson put together after agreeing to work 25 hours a week. As children's librarian, she oversees programs and helps brainstorm new ones like Make & Take, an interactive learning lab for kids in a critical age group. Magnuson said that even with more than a dozen weekly activities for toddlers to adults, there wasn't anything specifically for kids between third and sixth grade.
"We do a really good job when they're young, but then we tend to lose them. We need to engage these kids," Magnuson said.
The inaugural Make & Take attracted about 20 kids who learned about birds, played with animated toys and made pine-cone feeders. They also got suggested reading and Web links, the idea being that takeaways are as much about knowledge as material things.
Magnuson also initiated Day of the Child, a holiday just for kids in April, which is child-abuse prevention month. She wanted to create something light and fun in the midst of awareness campaigns, and former Idaho first lady Patricia Kempthorne and Garden City Mayor John Evans have both spoken at the event.
"It was one of those things where there really were people from everywhere - Boise Folklorico dancers, Otto Otter talking about canal safety, kids, parents, different ethnicities. It brought people together who normally wouldn't be."
Unfortunately, not enough of those people were from Garden City. The library staff is happy to have patrons from anywhere, but one of their goals is to reach more people who live and work in the neighborhood.
"We have 12,000 residents and we're not really getting all of them in here," Magnuson said. "We'd like to continue our effort with outreach."
That effort includes partnering with local schools, The Learning Lab, Boys & Girls Club, Head Start and sports teams including the Steelheads and the Stampede, both of which reward reading with game tickets. But perhaps the best loved outreach vehicle, literally, is the Bells for Books bus. It brings the library to the people, but unlike most bookmobiles, it doesn't require library cards or fees for keeping books.
"To get a book in a child's hand is the success, simply to get literacy in their lives," Zeiter said.
For those who can make it to the library, it's a state-of-the-art space that brings the outside in, from rocks embedded in the counters to a Fred Choate mural of rainbow trout to a wall of riverside windows. There is a rotating local art exhibit called Books and Brushes, a book store, computer stations, Wi-Fi and self-serve kiosks where patrons can pay for copies and check out books.
There also is a children's area that blends function and whimsy. The centerpiece is the "Secret Garden," an open room with its own Royal Puppet Theater and another Choate mural featuring fictional and historical characters from Cat in the Hat to Amelia Earhart.
For Magnuson, this is ground zero. People are beginning to understand the value of early literacy, but it's about more than reading 20 minutes a day. It's about feeling stories and sharing joy for language and ideas, especially when it gets parents involved in cultivating the minds of their children.
"It truly is a gift," she said. "Reading really will take you places."
Erin Ryan: 672-6732
