Archive: Around Town

After retiring most people want to spend what money they have to pursue other interests, or maybe travel a little.  But after a successful career as a youth librarian Susan Rosenkoetter wanted to continue sharing her love of books with children.  For most people that might mean volunteering at their local school or library.  While Rosenkoetter does those things she has also funded trips for Lansing teachers to national reading conferences, donated books, and for the past four years she has paid to bring renowned authors to speak and work with Lansing school students.

This week she hosted award-winning author Susan Campbell Bartoletti, a Newbury Honor writer who has published 14 works of fiction and non-fiction.  Bartoletti says Rosenkoetter was a major factor in her decision to speak here.  "What made me choose Lansing was, first of all, Susan Rosenkoetter's passion about books," she says.


Rosenkoetter hosts the authors in memory of her mother, Dorothy Davis Rosenkoetter.  Dorothy was an Iowa farm girl who married a Cayuga Lake Salt Company worker.  The couple raised Susan on Syrian Hill, overlooking Salt Point where her father worked.   Dorothy was a cafeteria worker in the Lansing schools for 18 years.  "That when they made real homemade food, and wore uniforms," Rosenkoetter says.  She worked here for 18 years and she loved the kids."

The couple nurtured Rosenkoetter's love of books, often buying copies of books that she saw in the high school library.  Rosenkoetter graduated from Ithaca College, then spent a career as Young Adult Librarian in the Rochester Library System.  After retiring she moved home to Lansing, where she hoped to be allowed to give book talks in the schools.  High School English Teacher June Martin was the first to invite her to speak, and soon other teachers followed suit.


Rosenkoetter was one of the first volunteers at the Lansing Community Library, spearheading kindergarteners' first visit to the library, and the highly successful Summer Reading Program that encouraged 141 Lansing kids to read well over 600 books last summer.  She is frequently found reading at the town Recreation Department's summer camp, at events at Baker's Acres, among many others. 

Known as 'Miss Susan the Book Lady' to hundreds of kids growing up in Lansing, Rosenkoetter herself could be a character out of a book.  She speaks in a voice young children find welcoming and unthreatening, as if reading a story.  She involves kids instead of merely reading to them, always gently hammering her message: Read books.  Learn to love reading.

But there is more to the kindly Book Lady than meets the eye.  For years she paid for Lansing teachers to accompany her to National Council of English Teachers conferences.  She brought them to Atlanta, Denver, Baltimore and San Francisco, where they met well known authors including Judy Blume and Lois Lowry and saw presentations by Julie Andrews, Dave Barry and many popular authors of books for young adults. Some of the teachers who have gone on these trips are Martin, Cathy Mosely, Denise Kaminsky, Lisa Peter, Jim Bedore, Judy Hinderliter and Brenda Meade.

Over the years many Lansing teachers have become personal friends who have worked with her on library programs, and she seems to attract teachers with the same spirit of giving.  Martin is one example, who quietly buys books to give her students every year, and actively hosts speakers such as Holocaust survivor and author Fred Voss.

"I had traveled a lot for English conferences, and I thought this was what I wanted to do with my money," Rosenkoetter says.  "It's not fun going alone.  It's more fun when you have a group with you and you can bounce your impressions off of each other.  They bring back books and their experiences with authors to bring back and share with their students.  Then I thought why don't I do something that the kids would benefit from directly?"


That's when she began bringing authors to Lansing.  The first year adventure and humor author Gordon Korman came.  Next she invited Vivian Vande Velde because she knew that kids love fantasy books.  Last year she asked kids what they would like and the result was sports author John Ritter.

This year she indulged her own love of history, her major at Ithaca College.  Bartoletti specializes in stories about kids who have done extraordinary things in times of adversity including World War II Germany, the Irish Potato famine, turn of the 20th century Pennsylvania coal mines, the Civil War, and Caroline Pickersgill, a thirteen-year-old girl who helped her mother sew the American Flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write what is now America's National Anthem.  She is a PhD. who has won the Newbury Honor and two Sibert Honors.


"I have very high standards for choosing the authors," Rosenkoetter says.  "They have to be award winning authors."

"I look at what Susan has done," Bartoletti said during a break between presentations Tuesday.  "She is a true gift.  I think she has received many gifts through her life through her wonderful mother and from these children she has cared so much about as a librarian, and she is passing that gift on.  That is the true meaning of a gift, when we pass it on."

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