About the Bookshop Curator

My name is Rachel. I have a BA in history, mostly medieval, sprinkled with liberal dashes of classics and philosophy. I like to read, read about books, shop for books, collect teacups, cook, host our friends, and neglect succulents. My husband and I and our four children (ages 5-14) recently moved back to Canada from the Republic of Georgia, where we taught in an international school for six years. Our children have had a diverse education, at home, in a classroom, in caves and on archeological sites, in a hybrid homeschool program here in Calgary, and now in the first classical charter school in Canada. Books, books, and more books have been a consistent feature of our lives. I began collecting books when I was thirteen, and my first job out of high school was in a library. While in Georgia, I devoted hours to building both the school library and our personal collection, 270 kilos of which we shipped back here to Calgary when we repatriated. I now have my dream job as the librarian of a classical K-12 school. I spend far too much time perusing book lists and reading the biographies of authors, and not enough time sweeping the floors, but feel vindicated when I watch my children spend their free time reading together on the sofa. I agree with Lewis that a child “does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.” I enjoy matching the right child to the right book, and have found that the best children’s books just get better as I get older.