One of my most treasured childhood memories is that of sitting with my older sister on the steps outside the Ida Williams branch of the Atlanta Public Library, as we waited for our mother to pick us up. My sister taught me how to read on those steps. She helped me to sound out words and to recognize punctuation marks. A little "eyebrow" on its side after a word meant I should take a short breath. A "dot" meant I should come to a stop.
But on this one particular summer afternoon, my sister was feeling hurt and angry as we sat outside the library. She who had been reading from the age of three—she who had devoured the library's entire youth collection by the time she was 12—had come up against a new librarian who wouldn't let her take out a book from the grown-ups section. She felt as if she'd been rejected from the one place she loved best to be.
My mother talked to the new librarian, and the issue was soon resolved, but that incident left me with a lasting impression of the way libraries—and librarians —can either play an important part in the development of thinkers, or turn them away.
