As heatwaves and hurricanes continue to send us indoors, a cool library full of picture books becomes even more appealing. This week, DART’s continuing series that invites creative directors to pimp their bookshelves offers a view into a library that  George McCalman, San Francisco-based Creative Director and Co-Principal of McCalman.Co, created for his grandmother. This is what he wrote:

At the time of this writing, I was visiting my family in the Caribbean, on the island nation of Grenada, where I was born and raised. Rather than the standard question/answer format, i thought it would be more fun to shake things up and write a short story of books, reading and an extremely literary life. 

My grandmother Lyris Holder has lived a rich life of 101 years. She receives questions, almost daily, about the secrets of her enviable longevity. She answers demurely, and often with sardonic humor. Yet she rarely states my theory of an aspect of her sustained vitality: she is an avid reader. 

When she turned 90, I began bringing books as my offering of celebration. She was, and remains, an obsessive reader. The compulsion manifests in a withdrawal from all forms of outside communication for hours without end. She will read, to the consternation of my judgmental family, anything. She travels hidden worlds hidden in sentences, inspects Roman poems with abandon, hymnals, stanzas, prose, and puzzles with equal ardor. 

Over the years, her unique collection of books, with my bias of high- and low-brow cultural selections as a foundation, has been dubbed Lyris’s Library. There are so many in her home that they have assumed places of noticed inconvenience: On shelves with fine china, even under the television.

My aunt drew the line when she saw a stack of books on the dining room table. Lyris’s organization is no organization. Categorizations are for nonagenarians. She often reads multiple books in the same sitting. There are books waiting to be read again, left in locations long forgotten. Her preoccupation is felt and lived. 

The latest collection I brought piqued her curiosity: “Where am I going to put these new ones, boy? You’re putting me out of my house.”  The latest issue of ‘Freeman’s: Conclusions,’ (top) edited by John Freeman.’ ‘New York, My Village’ by Uwem Akpan. ‘Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone’ by James Baldwin.

She laughed with a whisky-lover’s delight and reached for the book of poetry by Pasolini. She takes particular delight, as is a grandmother’s prerogative, in the books that I’ve designed or illustrated.

When I brought her copies of my book, ‘Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen,” she simply pointed to my name on the cover and looked wordlessly over at a visiting family member. 

I recently contributed to the latest paen to my second favorite author James Baldwin (Gabriel Garcia Marquez is my first) on the Hilton Als edited ‘God Made My Face.’ She was silent as she stared at the art (below), and then began turning the pages. “What do you think, Miss Lyris?” I asked, knowing her yet unspoken answer. 

I’m in the book,” she says, “My heart is in there.”

Links to George McCalman’s Website and Instagram