Drake Mathers and the Children He Stopped Listening To

Drake Mathers and the Children He Stopped Listening To Drake Mathers tells the librarian he's worth two billion dollars while explaining why he won't give her another two weeks to move her books. Hundreds of first editions could be destroyed, and he's more concerned with what the construction foreman costs per hour. When she asks why he has to be like this, his answer is that being like this is how he got rich. That's the father Sela and Thomas are dealing with at the beginning of The Library. He's successful, he's busy, and trying to get a few minutes of his attention has become its own project for his children. Spoilers for The Library #1–5. Sela tells him she's made the swim team and asks him to come to a meet. He has a business trip to China. Thomas points out that she never even tried out, and the whole thing falls apart. She was trying to find a reason for him to show up. Thomas isn't getting much better results with his lacrosse games. There's an especially ugly moment when Sela tells her father she hates him and he answers as though she said she loves him. He's so distracted by the conversation on his phone that he isn't really hearing her. You can see why she keeps trying harder to get a reaction out of him. Then the children open the wrong book. Sela reads a spell, the library's stories start spilling into the building, and both children get pulled into other worlds. Drake hears Sela screaming and comes running. Whatever he's failed to notice until then, he knows that sound. The rest of the story puts him in a situation his money can't settle. Gunmen emerge from a book. Dinosaurs and monsters appear. The children are separated from him, and even finding a way to get the police involved isn't straightforward. He's eventually outside the building with the librarian, but once he realizes his children are still in there, he goes back. Meanwhile, Pecos Bill has been talking to Sela about her father. Sela sees a man who cares about companies and money more than her. Pecos asks whether she's considered that looking at his daughter might remind Drake of the wife he lost. Their mother died, and the family has been pulling apart ever since. That conversation could have gone badly if the story left Sela responsible for fixing her father. Fortunately, when they find each other again, Drake takes responsibility himself. He breaks a chair over a zombie chasing her, they embrace, and when she apologizes, he tells her she has nothing to apologize for. He admits that his own grief got in the way of caring for his children. That's the conversation I wanted from him. Sela needed her dad. Being hurt himself helps explain why he withdrew, but he still had two children who were hurting too. He also follows those words with action. When Baba Yaga attacks Sela, Drake jumps in front of the blast. He survives it, and the librarian, Alex, saves him from a zombie while he's down. He's plainly outmatched by the magical creatures around him, yet he keeps putting himself between the danger and his family. By the time the spell is reversed, both children are back with him. The library needs a lot of work. Drake agrees to help Ms. Sullivan restore it, and he wants them to do that together as a family. I like that the ending gives him something practical to do. At the beginning, the library is a property deal and the books are somebody else's problem. At the end, he's going to help put the place back together with the children he'd barely been listening to. He can't undo their mother's death or the time he spent shutting them out, but he can finally show up for the work in front of him.