Skip to main content

library

Children in America

December 3, 2020

go to the library to learn how to administer NARCAN
to stop their mother or father’s heart from overdosing. 

Photography by Maisie Crow

Susan Orlean’s Notes to Self

A library, of course, makes for a stubborn protagonist in a work of narrative journalism. “The reality is, it’s just different writing about something that has all of the complexity of bureaucracy. I don’t do a lot of stories where I have to go through channels to get the material I want, and I’m not somebody who knows how to game a system to get access to stuff.” Doggedness helped, both in chasing leads and, later, arranging them—fittingly, with one of the indispensible tools of the librarian’s trade.