Mychal Threets is social media’s most popular librarian and the host of an online revival of Reading Rainbow. He launched a TikTok account during the COVID pandemic and quickly amassed more than 1.5 million followers.
Now he can add “author” to his resume. Threets will visit Wichita on Tuesday as part of a nationwide tour promoting his new children’s book, I’m So Happy You’re Here: A Celebration of Library Joy.
KMUW’s Suzanne Perez talked with Threets recently about the new book and his mission to promote literacy and public libraries.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
SUZANNE: What inspired your new children’s book?
THREETS: What inspired it was really just my lifelong love of libraries. I describe the various encounters that I’ve had with library people, day in and day out, and just trying to convince them that the library is a place where they belong.
I believe it's a celebration anytime someone goes to the library, anytime they get a library card. I wrote the word “belong” quite a bit in the story, in an effort to get kids to believe that they belong in the library. And by belonging in the library, they also belong in the world. The library is a place for everyone, where we all have a place and a space that we fit in.
SUZANNE: Can you share some of your early library memories?
THREETS: I got my library card when I was 5 years old, but I've been in the library since I was 3. My mom homeschooled me and my siblings, and we were always at the local library. We learned to use the self-checkout machines when my library first got them. We were the kids who would run into the library and grab our holds off the wall. We were doing the Pizza Hut Book It Challenge. I brought my cat to the pet parade — it’s one of my favorite library memories.
I was a shy, anxious kid, so I made friends in Junie B. Jones and Amelia Bedelia, in Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins, in Ralph S. Mouse and the Wayside School kids, in Nancy Drew and Bridge to Terabithia. So many books, and now I have many of them tattooed on my arms. I have several Richard Scarry tattoos. I have the Mad Hatter and Frog and Toad. I have The Monster at the End of this Book. My tattooist just started my other half sleeve with Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots from the Bailey School Kids. So we're going to do a whole bunch more book covers. I call them my readers’ advisory tattoo sleeves.
SUZANNE: What is your overall message on this book tour?
THREETS: My message has been the same since people have started seeing me on social media, since they started visiting me at my local library in Solano County, California: It’s that everyone belongs in the library. No matter if they're having a bad day, a mediocre day, the best day ever, the library is still the place for them.
People ask me, “Are you sure I can bring my autistic kid to the library?” And I’m like, “Yes, bring your full self to the library. Bring your autism, bring your anxiety, bring whatever you have going on in your life to the library.” The library is that place where there are no expectations. People like me are going to try their hardest to have you get a library card and to fall in love with books. But it's okay if you just want to come inside, out of the rain, out of the heat, and take a seat, and either just mind your own business or talk to somebody new.
SUZANNE: Don’t you have to be quiet in a library?
THREETS: The reason that libraries have been kind of taboo for some people is because of that quiet aspect. I mean, yes, it is a quiet place. We use our library voices. It is a place where you can go to study, and I love that. But I think in making the library this ultra-quiet place, where the librarian was this feared person who was waiting around the corner to shush you, that is why libraries weren't the most favorite place in the world for a long time. It especially excluded neurodivergent folks, people who may not be able to control stimming or various outbursts of joyful noise.
It’s probably going to bother some people, but I’m saying, “Yeah, you can come to the library. You can make noise.” We’re going to teach you and encourage you, but we're going to take it experience by experience. We're trying to work with everybody, and it’s that belonging of a library that takes precedence. The library is the house of books, the house of community, the house of good things, and people are like, “OK, cool I can go to this place, and I can be myself.”
SUZANNE: What’s it like being the new face of Reading Rainbow?
THREETS: LaVar Burton is very much a hero of mine. I’m one of the Reading Rainbow kids that he raised by saying that I'm worthy of reading, to “Take a look, it’s in a book,” and I'm just honored to be a part of one of my favorite shows.
I’m trying to get people to realize that they belong in books, that books are for every single one of us. Graphic novels, comic books, Manga, audiobooks — reading is reading, book joy is book joy. And I’m just glad that it's back and that I have a role in it.
SUZANNE: It’s a critical time for libraries, with book challenges reaching their highest level in recent years. What are your thoughts on some of the political issues facing libraries?
THREETS: People don't realize that so many people don't have access to Barnes & Noble, to Amazon. So if you remove or restrict a book from a school library, a public library, a kid will never be able to read those stories.
But there is so much love for books, so much love for literature. People are realizing what's going on, and they're saying, “You know what, we're not going to let people's fear of these stories get in the way.” LGBTQIA+ stories belong in the world. Stories about people of color, featuring the history of what's happened in the world, belongs. We should have access to these stories, to this truth.
It's time for us to turn up the volume on library joy and say, “It's okay if you and your family aren't ready for a particular book, but that's for you and your household.” Other households get to say, “Hey, maybe my kid is here. They're ready for this. We're going to try it out.”
SUZANNE: What do you say to kids who don’t like to read?
I meet so many kids who are reluctant readers, who are like, “I don't like reading. Reading is boring.” And then you look at their shirt, you look at their shoes, their backpack, their hat, and you're like, “Oh, you like SpiderMan. You like sports. You like dinosaurs. You like dragons. You like princesses.” I love that books are a way to say, “Hey, you have this interest? There's a book about it.”
