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Full Circle: A Guest Post by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass

By Rebecca Stead, Wendy Mass / March 17, 2025 at 1:43 am

The dynamic duo of Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass is back in action. The Lost Library is a love letter to books and the libraries (and bookstores) that house their magic. Read on for an exclusive essay from Rebecca and Wendy on writing The Lost Library.

Paperback $8.99

The Lost Library (B&N Exclusive Edition)

By Rebecca Stead , Wendy Mass

In Stock Online

Paperback $8.99

Now a New York Times bestseller and a #1 Indie Bestseller, readers won’t want to miss this story of a little free library guarded by a cat, and a boy who takes on the mystery it keeps.

Every story starts with a seed. It might be a character who starts “talking” to you, a special place you’ll never forget, or a “what-if” question you’ve always wondered about.

The first seed of The Lost Library was planted by the magic of little free libraries. Wendy was with her family on a road trip when they came upon their first Little Free Library on a street in Boise, Idaho, and discovered the very next book in the Percy Jackson series that her daughter needed. Now on high alert for these magical boxes, the second one they found had one of Rebecca’s novels in it, along with one of Wendy and Rebecca’s favorite childhood books, Half Magic, by Edward Eager. This LFL had double the magic!! Back home, Wendy and her daughter set about building their own Little Free Library. They still take great pleasure in watching it fill up again and again.

So The Lost Library would begin with a Little Free Library. But what kind of story would this book be?

We both write for kids because reading meant so much to us when we were growing up. Books were portals for us, through which we could slip into other worlds. Though we didn’t meet until we were both in our thirties, we quickly discovered that we’d loved many of the same books in grade school. We grew up differently – Rebecca in the city, an only child, and Wendy in the suburbs with twin sisters – but, through those shared reading experiences, we had spent time in many of the same invented places, getting to know the same imagined characters.

Some of those childhood books we loved were about magic. Some were mysteries. Some were about animals. Most of them were also about friendship and family. We decided that The Lost Library would be a book about all of it.

We wanted to write a story that, just like a great bookstore or a library, contained different kinds of stories. And we also wanted to tell a story about how stories can change us. Over the course of a year, the characters took shape: Evan, a fifth-grader with a mystery to solve; Mortimer, an old cat with an old secret; and Al, a ghost who also happens to be an assistant librarian. Each of them has a story to tell, and they discover that, together, they can tell an even bigger one.

In a very real way, B&N is responsible for the existence of The Lost Library. A few years ago, we were asked to write an epilogue for a special B&N edition of our first book together, BOB. In it, Bob waxes eloquent about his discovery of little free libraries (“The books are free, and you get to keep them!”). It was here, we think, that our first seed was watered.

Thank you for bringing us full circle. We are honored that Barnes & Noble has embraced The Lost Library with a special edition (and a gorgeous cover), and we hope that young readers find their own magic in it.