There was a hippo in the kitchen. No one knew how it got there, or when, but there was undeniably an enormous, sloppy, disheveled hippo in the kitchen. "And," I said, examining the lunch my mother had ... [+]
Susan Lendroth has written children's picture books as well as essays and articles. She works for Los Angeles Public Library, a dream job for any booklover. "To An Unknown Booklover" is in Short Circuit #14, Short Édition's quarterly review.
I don't remember which I encountered first: Helene Hanff's book, 84 Charing Cross Road, or the Anne Bancroft / Anthony Hopkins movie of the same name. All I know is that decades later the title's blend of London, letters, and books still enchants me.
Published 50 years ago, 84 Charing Cross Road is a romance of the mail—a collection of letters between Helene, a feisty New York writer, and Frank Doel, the unfailingly polite manager of an antiquarian London bookshop. Individually, those letters speak of books and the correspondents' day-to-day lives. Collectively, they weave together a meetin