Ebert & The Urbana Free Library
"On the last day of school, time stretched forward beyond all imagining... The lives of kids were not so fast-tracked in those days. We would get together after breakfast and make desultory conversation, evaluate suggestions, and maybe play softball, shoot baskets, go down into somebody's basement, play cards, [or] go to [T]he Urbana Free Library for Miss Fiske's Summer Reading Club…”
- Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was big a fan of The Urbana Free Library. He got his first library card at the age of 7 and often rode his bike down to the library pedaling home with saddlebags bursting with books. Ebert lists his winning of the 1951 Summer Reading Contest – he read 105 books – as one of his first and greatest honors. During summer breaks Ebert remembered, “In my room I read late into the night in the heat and humidity, the book balanced on my chest. I read far later than I should have. I’d joined the Book-of-the-Month Club with a twenty-five-dollar gift certificate from my aunt Martha.”
He developed a strong relationship with librarian Bernice Fiske and relied on her advice for finding new good reads. Fiske was the children’s librarian at The Urbana Free Library for 48 years (1924-1972). Ebert remembered her having an unique approach: “Miss Fiske was right on your level. She never told you a book was good for you. She never said, ‘you should read this.’ She never pushed you. She conspired with you. You were readers together. And her eyes would twinkle and she would say, ‘I think you might like this one.’” Fiske was also known for her Saturday morning puppet shows. She had children’s jaws dropping in wonderment and astonishment for 45 years as she and her puppets enacted scenes from books that children had read, should have read, or would read.
Later in life, Ebert used his influence to help support his boyhood library. “An Evening with Roger Ebert,” held October 13, 2001 was a special event to benefit The Urbana Free Library Expansion Project. The 2005 expansion doubled the size of the library and tripled the size of the Children’s Services department. Launched in March 2002, the “Free and Wonderful” logo was designed to create excitement for the 2005 expansion. Inspiration for the text came from Roger Ebert’s personalized inscription to then library director Fred Schlipf’s copy of Roger Ebert’s Movie Home Companion. The inscription read: “To Fred Schlipf, of The Urbana Free and Wonderful Library.”
