Pearl appeared regularly on public radio, recommending books, and eventually became the executive director of the library system's Washington Center for the Book. The project, initially funded by a grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, was subsequently adopted by a number of cities, including Chicago, Buffalo and Rochester.

In Seattle, she became something of a local celebrity, founding the pioneering and much-imitated 'If All Seattle Read The Same Book' project, encouraging every adult and every adolescent in the city to read the same book at the same time. Pearl said the decision to join the library was one of the few times in her life when she instinctively knew she was doing the right thing. She originally traveled to Seattle without her husband for four years, until he reached retirement age and joined her. Craig Buthod, who worked with Pearl in Tulsa before he became the deputy director of the Seattle Public Library, recruited her to come to Seattle in 1993. She worked in an independent bookstore as well as the Tulsa City-County Library System. Pearl moved with her husband, professor Joe Pearl, from Detroit to Oklahoma, where she raised two daughters (Eily Raman and Katie) while earning another master's degree, this one in history. As a hobby, Pearl wrote poetry as a young woman and in 1980 published a story in Redbook magazine called 'The Ride to School.' She credits books and librarians with helping her through a difficult childhood: 'It's not too much of an exaggeration-if it's one at all-to say that reading saved my life.' She earned her master's in library science at the University of Michigan (1967) and became a children's librarian in her hometown library system before moving on to other libraries. Her decision to become a librarian started at the age of 10 with the inspiration of the children's librarian at her local public library. Nancy Pearl was raised in Detroit, Michigan and, by her own account, spent much time of her childhood at the public library.

Book crush nancy pearl