Library Director Begins a New Chapter in Career : Books: Michael Cart, who is also a cable talk-show host, is quitting to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a writer.

At a time when most of his colleagues would be thrilled to head one of the most elegant municipal libraries in the country, Michael Cart, fittingly enough, is checking out.

The popular director of Library and Community Services for the city of Beverly Hills, Cart is leaving his post at the end of August to pursue a lifelong dream to become a full-time writer.

“I’ve just put it off for too long,” Cart said. “It’s gotten to the point where enough editors and publishers are asking me to write books and articles that it seemed it was not unrealistic for me to make a living as a writer.”

Cart, 50, arrived in Beverly Hills 15 years ago after a tenure as library director in his hometown in Indiana, with a stopover in the Pomona library system. He was named to Beverly Hills’ top library post in 1980, and, he says, he hasn’t stopped running since.

A nationally known expert on children’s literature, the soft-spoken Cart has overseen the growth of the library (it has a 170,000-volume collection) while heading the Community Services program, acting as the city’s liaison to the Fine Arts Committee and serving as the host of “In Print,” the much-acclaimed weekly half-hour TV show that appears on more than 150 cable stations in the United States and Canada.

All the while he has written a steady stream of articles, books reviews and critical essays for such publications as the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Library Journal and Children’s Literature in Education.

“I had to create time to read and to finish all the projects I was doing, so I started getting up at 4 a.m.,” Cart said. “But it was worth it. It seemed like the right time to go. I think that there is a smooth, pleasantly warm body of water awaiting me when I jump.”

Certainly there will be no shortage of projects. He has just completed his first adult novel and is shopping it around to publishers. He said he has been approached to edit a series of anthologies of children’s literature and, of course, there’s always that huge amount of work to do on Freddy.

Freddy is the name of a famous pig who talks and types and writes doggerel. The fictional pig, created by the late Walter Brooks, has been the focus of a tireless quest by Cart, who has tried to spread the joys of Freddydom to the world. The president of the international league of the Friends of Freddy, Cart recently bought all of Brooks’ papers and at some point plans to write a critical biography of Freddy’s creator, who he thinks has been vastly underrated for his contribution to the world of children’s literature.

“He took the genre by the scruff of the neck and shook it,” Cart said. “He didn’t talk down to kids, and he wasn’t moralistic. Everything I know about friendship, morality and ethics came from the Freddy the Pig books.”

Despite his porcine passion, Cart, is still perhaps best-known for the “In Print” program, which he uses to promote his favorite authors and his love for books. Financed and produced by the city of Beverly Hills since 1982, “In Print” has been filmed at various locales around the city but is currently shot at a studio in the library’s former home.

The library’s new headquarters is the stuff of librarians’ dreams. The two-story structure is the latest showpiece of renowned architect Charles Moore and the crown jewel in the city’s ornate Civic Center. It incorporates Moorish arches, canopy lighting fixtures, marble countertops and other extravagant features in a complex design that includes a separate children’s area scaled down to kids’ size. And it provides plenty of room to house the city’s sizable book and film collections.

Cart waited for years for the library to be completed and admits he will miss the early mornings when he is alone in the building. “There’s a kind of communion there then,” he said. “It’s absolutely spectacularly beautiful. There’s no other library in the country that compares to it.”

Yet despite his love for his new headquarters, Cart said it was not enough to hold him in a $79,000-a-year job that civic officials said they wished he would keep well into the next century.

“We’re really sad to see him go,” Mayor Vicki Reynolds said. “We’ve had the wonderful benefit of his scholarly approach to making the library a cultural and educational center. He’s brought a wonderful personal touch and prestige to the library, and he’s been a real asset to the community.”

Although he has done most of his scholarly research in the field of children’s literature, Cart nevertheless has yet to pen a novel for young readers. He said he expects to address that omission as long as he can still put pen to paper.

“No doubt my heart belongs to the world of young readers,” he said. “Children’s literature is a viable body of literature. It’s definitely not the cheap seats in the house.”