A cute and brainy bibliophile, this trope embodies the Moe archetype as applied to a nerdy girl. She wanders around with her head in a book, and is ready to spout out facts at the drop of a hat. There's a tendency for her to be shy, young, quiet and socially awkward. Occasionally this is highlighted by having her wear glasses, or have her bangs in her face to hide her eyes. She'll almost always be more conservatively dressed than most of the cast.

This trope tends to be female, but there are male examples, though they tend to be younger males, or at least look it. Occupation wise they might be a scientist, a librarian, a schoolgirl, a Squishy Wizard, or something similar in nature.

May overlap with Badass Bookworm and Adorkable. Contrast Hot Librarian for an older more authoritative version. Subtrope of Bookworm.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has a male example with Yuuno Scrya. Head librarian of the Infinity Library but he grew up to be quite the bishie after the Time Skip.
• In Mahou Sensei Negima! Nodoka fills this role.. She extremely bookish, wears her hair over her face and works at the school The Library of Babel. Lord of the Rings is in her top 10 books to have if she is ever stranded on a Deserted Island.
• Yomiko Readman from Read or Die. Her outright giddiness over books qualifies her, and she spends thousands per week on books.
• Levi from Fairy Tail, though she's more Genki Girl than shy. Lucy's also a bit of a bookworm.
• Sheska from Fullmetal Alchemist. Memorized the whole library, wears glasses and cute as a button.
• Shiori from The World God Only Knows to the extent that Keima actually begins grading her according to the librarian girl archetype from his beloved dating sims.
• Yuki Nagato from Suzumiya Haruhi seems built to be a perfect example of this as the only member of the now defunct Literature Club and her head constantly in a book. Key words being 'seems built' as her personality doesn't match her appearance and behavior. Except in Disappearance. Glasses appear optional.

Film

• Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. While she isn't exactly shy, she has no friends and feels isolated from the village.
• Evey starts out this way in The Mummy, before she levels up to Badass Bookworm.

Webcomics

• Criminy from Sinfest is a good male example, from inside his fort of books. His large eyes, intellect, and a sweet demeanour are what Fuchsia falls in love with.

Visual Novels

• Hiroko in Yume Miru Kusuri which is immensely different from the 'normal' face she presents as Nekoko because her normal life pains her.
• Kotomi in CLANNAD is very socially awkward, shy and ridiculously intelligent. She also reads to a fairly unhealthy extent.
• Hanako in Katawa Shoujo, though the social isolation is actually due to a complex over her burn scars. The Peek-a-Bangs part of the trope are also for the same reason. Still a shy, quiet bookworm that covers her face, though.

Video Games

• Tokimeki Memorial 1 has Mio Kisaragi, a cute and shy Meganekko who loves reading books (to the point of reading four of them per day), thus she spends a lot of her time at libraries, and she often helps at Kirameki High's one. It's also her who finds the Soccer Manual that'll help the protagonist improve his striker skills, during the storyline of the side game Nijiiro no Seishun.

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