Video by Ryan Gladstone

Will Stuck stares hard at the plastic cup in front of him, his eyes level with the water that fills the cup to the top.

Please work, he’s thinking. Please work.

“OK,” he says. “We’re gonna try it.”

All around him, kids lean in, staring hard at the plastic cup, too.

Will takes a swirly green marble between his fingers, rolls it over the cup’s edge and lets go.

No water spills.

Awesome.

Will adds more marbles, then pennies, quarters and dimes, but the water doesn’t spill. It rises, an invisible skin over it creating a dome best seen at eye level.

Will slides a quarter in.

“Cha-ching,” says Noah Hutchison, 7, at Will’s side.

“Oh my goodness,” Will says. “Can you guys see that?”

Eyes wide, they can. The kids at East Hills Library’s first meeting of Club Einstein, where Will spends the next hour teaching kids about surface tension, will see some pretty cool things tonight. What they can’t see, though, is how much this children’s librarian himself has learned, from books, from kids and from finding that what he’s best at is what he’s done all along.

Small doors lead to big things

It started with a small door, wooden and just right for a kid to pass through. The door at the Downtown Library lead to books, full of stories of other worlds, strange creatures, mystical powers.

Will passed through it often growing up, going to the library with his dad. In elementary school, Will was the kid on the sidewalk during recess, reading.

At 18, he started his first job downtown, shelving books. Among the aisles, he also found Crystal Brewer, who became a good friend over time. Will got promoted to be the delivery guy, shuttling books between branches. He moved up to the circulation desk — the job worked great as he studied art at Missouri Western State University, thinking perhaps he’d go into a career in animation someday. He worked at different libraries, “and they found out I could do balloon animals.”

So Will did a balloon animal program.

“Then they found out I could do magic tricks.”

So Will did a magic trick program.

Somehow, juggling was added into the mix, but Will didn’t know how to do that. So he learned.

He graduated from Missouri Western. He married his friend Crystal, also a librarian, and soon he was brought to head up the children’s program at the East Hills Library. There he had a small door of his own built into the children’s reading room.

He told stories, using voices he found amusing, and the crowds at his story times grew — and the demand for him to read stories grew. He began having after-school programs — at spy school, kids learned secret codes Will had found in books. He taught teens to knit, but first he had to learn himself. They made wallets out of duct tape.

For some time, Will thought the job was a good one, but that he’d move on. But the more he did, the more people came, the more Will began learning that maybe this was the right spot for him.

“There’s still times I feel like I’m a big sham,” he says, sometimes in disbelief that someone pays him to do his job.

In a recent nine-week session, though, Will held 59 programs, and the calendar on his computer, right near his pet tarantula Drizzt, remains full.

“The more he does, the more people want him to do,” says Steve Olson, branch manager at East Hills.

Will’s a ham, Steve says, and he enjoys what he does, which comes across.

But as funny as he his, says his wife, as great as he reads stories and relates to kids, “Will’s best quality is being a dad.”

Hours not spent at the library are spent with his family, Lilah, 5, and Curran, 2. Will’s also in a punk/heavy metal band called It, where he plays the bass guitar. He loves hockey and “Harry Potter.”

But the grizzly bear of a man with curly hair and a beard has found the most fame as a librarian. He reads kids stories twice a day during preschool story time. He plans sessions for kids of all ages ever summer, spring, winter and fall. He paints murals for the reading room, he’s on TV, in front of teachers, educators and parents.

And along the way, he’s getting kids into the library.

Sheila Miller drives her three sons in from Helena, Mo., once a week to come to the library and to see Will.

She loves his storytimes, his voices. And, Sheila says, he’s unlike any librarian she’s ever met.

“I don’t think I’ve ever known one that was quite this fun.”

That fun isn’t just for show, though. It’s like the small door Will used to step through, something cool that leads to something more.

He’s drawn attention statewide, too, where he’s currently teaching Missouri librarians a little something special in preparation for this summer’s reading program, “Catch the reading bug.”

Will’s teaching them how to hold bug-tasting programs, with chocolate-covered crickets, chocolate chirp cookies and meal worm suckers. The program started as part of one he held on gross stuff. So they didn’t think he was just a bug-eating freak, Will also taught them songs, story-time ideas and crafts to go along with the theme. Oh, and he does make the treats at home.

Crystal’s not a big fan of that, he says.

And the crickets?

They have a nutty flavor, he says, a little like their cook.

Their turn

For Club Einstein’s next experiment, Will tries something he’s just learned a few hours before from a book upstairs.

He shakes out a white handkerchief.

“A handkerchief?” a little voice calls.

“A handkerchief,” Will affirms. “Now, can you guys see light through this?”

He holds the handkerchief up to the overhead lights.

“Now, do you guys think the surface tension of this water will be able to pour through our handkerchief?”

The kids, by now, have learned.

Will places the cloth over a wine glass, fills it with water, then pulls the cloth tight.

He turns it over.

No water spills out.

Two girls in the club look at each other, mouths open.

Soon, the kids pour water through their own handkerchiefs, into their own plastic cups. Will makes his way around the table, from child to child, checking to see if they’ve learned what he’s taught them.

“Will,” calls Noah Seiter, 6.

“Yes,” Will says, looking over. He sees Noah, dangling his water-filled cup upside down in the air, no water spilling out.

“Awesome,” Will says.

And it is.