Michelle Howard, Founder, Living Learning Libraries

For almost 30 years, Michelle has been a librarian, home-education consultant, author, columnist, and speaker, specializing in top-quality living books, educational vision, and history instruction. It began in 1995, when she pioneered the first-known library of “living books” (highest quality, mostly-out-of-print youth literature), which has been thriving ever since; this Children's Preservation Library (Michigan) now lends over 21,000 valuable volumes, serving patrons in several counties. Then, in 2016, she founded Living Learning Libraries in Florida, currently lending over 41,000 books, with plans for additional branches.

Michelle is considered a national leader/expert on living libraries and literature, and helps others around the nation found and operate such libraries, including requests to work with colleges, charter schools, and educational cooperatives. She has been engaged by a non-profit foundation to help the library at Hillsdale Academy (K-12 classical school affiliated with Hillsdale College). She has developed a massive database on youth literature, and her first-hand knowledge of these in all academic areas is unsurpassed. 

She has also been asked to speak about education, literature, and history at many levels--both in person and via national radio--and is a regular contributing columnist to various national magazines and educational websites. Additionally, she also privately helps families find deep child-specific vision through local or long-distance consultation as Living Books Lady.

Michelle wrote the multiple award-winning TruthQuest History curriculum, which steers families through American and World history with deep, engaging, spiritually-probing commentary, and which embeds her vast knowledge of topic-specific living books recommendations.

An outstanding student herself in both high school and college (including invitations to apply to West Point, MIT, etc.), Michelle graduated summa cum laude from University of Alabama, with a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Communications, after an extensive, senior project in youth literature & library science. Michelle home-educated all four of her children—one a Hillsdale College alumnus, admitted to their esteemed Honors Program, and another graduated from Houghton College. She’s been an active member of local churches and educational support groups over the years, has traveled to Europe and Russia several times, including overseas mission trips and international adoption, and now has seven cute grandsons.