As Arthur celebrates National Library Week, one of his top fans, Mychal Threets, a librarian and social media phenom who spreads “library joy” among his million-plus followers, had the chance to meet his beloved aardvark. Check out this just-released conversation between Threets and Arthur here.
Threets, who has an Arthur library card tattooed on his left arm, has been featured on Good Morning America and in The New York Times and The Washington Post. He says the GBH Kids-produced Arthur was a constant companion during his early years when he was homeschooled.
GBH Kids’ Tara Mayes said she’s thrilled that Threets jumped at the opportunity when she reached out to him about collaborating on a library week project. At the same time she connected with him, PBS Kids was finalizing its partnership with Threets to be its “resident librarian” for a social media series. “Mychal is such a natural partner for PBS and GBH,” she said.
His enthusiastic, heartwarming stories online and shout-outs to libraries, literacy, and mental health promotion, which often go viral, are buoyant love letters to books. His joy even earned him the American Library Association’s I Love My Librarian Award for Outstanding Library Service. A native Californian, he was most recently the librarian at Solano County Library—where he got his first library card as a five-year-old.
He openly shares his struggles with his mental health and says the sense of belonging that libraries provide has always been an important anchor.
“You don’t have to be a bookworm to enjoy a library,” he said. “Libraries are all about belonging. Libraries are reflective of everything that's good—it’s all right there in the local library,” he said. “As Arthur says, ‘having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card!’”
With 16 million likes on TikTok, Threets tells stories of library patrons, encourages reading, and offers moral support.
As a lifelong Arthur reader and viewer, Threets said making a video with Arthur felt like coming “full circle.”
“I hope that the video gives people a sense of joy,” he said. “People have said that I look really happy in the video — which I was because I was talking with an old friend.”
