Saving the World with a Glue Gun

                So, my brother-in-law and family are away for the holidays and I’m on house sitting duty, which means I have to go keep their cats and television company.  I wouldn’t want their tv to feel neglected after all. This turned out to be the perfect opportunity to catch up on all the episodes of the new show The Librarians.  It’s not quite as good as the movies. After all it takes four librarians to replace Noah Wylie.  But still, it has action, librarians, mythology, saving the world from evil; all the things I like in a good story.

                Unfortunately, it’s a little depressing. It reminds me that in the superhero realm I lack skills. I don’t have photographic, super-computing, encyclopedic knowledge. As a matter of fact when it comes to mythology, history, art, the classics, I rather stink. I know a fair amount about genetics, health, animals, particularly livestock, religious history and young adult fantasy literature, but those don’t seem to be a knowledge basis needed to save the world from evil.

                In Jim Hines’ The Libriomancer, the protagonist has the ability to grab weapons from fantasy and science fiction novels. But even if I could grab a weapon out of a book, which I can’t, I don’t know classic fantasy and sci fi well enough to arm myself with all the right books. And Tuesday Next, the literary special agent of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, is able to jump into books and change what happens. She is apparently responsible for Jane Eyre having a somewhat happy ending, after all.  But this requires her to have a rather exacting knowledge of literature, which I lack.

                It appears I have no hope of being a literary special agent, a libriomancer, or one of The Librarians. That is until I read Firegirl by Tony Abbott with the Homer Jr. High School Book Club. In Firegirl, Tom the protagonist dreams of having superhero powers. But, little ones. He wants some odd power that would be worthless in most situations, but just the right thing in a particular story.  Something like spinning really fast, or rolling uphill, or having a hand made of glue.

                So, I’m trying to figure out a story where a little library superpower can save the world. A power like the ability to find miss-shelved books, or being really good with a toilet bowl plunger, or the ability to glue together small pieces of construction paper into almost anything. Then I’ll say “Ha!” to those Librarians, “You may have super sneaking-photographic memory- living computer- encyclopedic minds with awesome fighting skills, but can you save the world with a glue gun?”