Closed for the Season

The written word is a crucial motif that plays an important role in Closed for the Season. As a librarian herself, Hahn is likely more than aware of the important role that libraries can play in a child’s life. The library is at the very center of the boys’ investigation. They use the library to make copies of the newspaper and Mrs. Donaldson’s letters, and they even use it to find the old maps of the Magic Forest. The copies of the letters and maps ultimately prove to be an indispensable part of the boys’ investigation, without which the police’s case against Mr. DiSilvio may well have also fallen apart. Though certain people like Rhoda, Anthony, and Mrs. Forbes may view reading with some scorn, books and intellect are things that are strongly upheld as positive traits and hobbies in the narrative. People who do not read, like Silas Phelps or Billy Jarmon, are ridiculed, often by Arthur himself, for their seeming lack of intellect.

Outside of the more practical ways that reading helps the boys in the novel, it also offers certain characters an emotional outlet.