The Quiet, Life-Changing Magic of Libraries
I can say with complete confidence that getting my first library card was the most life-altering experience of my life. I haven’t had a single moment since to rival it—and I secretly hope I never do. I was eight or nine years old, already in love with my school librarian, Mrs. Purden. Her son Trevor was in my grade (I thought he was the biggest jerk), but his mother had the most spectacular job I could imagine. When our class visited the school library, she taught us the basics of library science, then read aloud to us like it mattered. She always wore a rubber thimble on her right index finger. I was convinced it was a kind of talisman—that librarianship required special equipment, and that the thimble was proof.
My love affair with language was already underway. I was an obsessive reader. If there is a photograph of me from childhood, I am either holding a book, reading a book, or it doesn’t exist. I read encyclopedias, cereal boxes, anything… with words. My writing heroes ranged wildly, from Beverly Cleary to Toni Morrison, from Jane Austen to Alexandre Dumas. I read three or four books a day and stayed up through the night, a habit that likely explains my insomnia from seventh grade well into my twenties. My reading wasn’t expensive, but it was relentless, and my parents eventually needed a solution. Enter the Camden County Public Library.
