I wrote a piece this month for Sisters In Crime's "We Love Libraries" newsletter. Per their website:
In 2010, Sisters in Crime instituted the We Love Libraries grant to help libraries as they struggled to recover following the Great Recession. Since then, SINC has made over $120,000 in grants to school and public libraries in the United States and Canada. Libraries are the heart of their communities and play a vital role by inspiring lifelong learning and love of reading. This year, SINC will make six grants of $500 each.
You can sign up here to read it each month. If you're a librarian interested in applying for the grant, you can do that here.
It's not up on the website yet, but it went out in the newsletter so here's a copy of what I wrote:
From the first moment I entered the library at Sherman Middle School in Hutchinson, Kansas, I was in love. The librarian was a red-headed firecracker who studied karate. Bookshelves filled the room, most of them at an angle so they could squeeze as many shelves in as possible. They had books I'd been forbidden from reading, like those by Christopher Pike, Agatha Christie, and Edgar Allen Poe.
I loved it for all the reasons above but also because the librarian chose me to be a library aide. At the time, I was so shy I wouldn't say boo to a ghost. We'd moved around a lot, often more than once a school year, so I was entering middle school without a single friend.
Loneliness was my way of life, and books were my only companions. By the time I hit middle school, I spent more than half my time absorbed in words on a page. In books, I could escape the poverty that was my day-to-day existence. In books, I heard about other kids experiencing abuse, bullying, and loneliness.
My best memories of middle school happened in that library. The happiest was when we wrote our own storybooks and read them to grade schoolers. It made me realize on a more fundamental level that people, some just like me, wrote those books. They had careers where the stories they came up with in their heads appeared on a page and went out into the world—careers where their words helped kids like me.
I would not be on this writing journey if it weren't for that library.
The school no longer exists as it did before- decades ago the town decided to divide the two middle schools a different way, with Sherman housing only the 7th grade students.
I often wonder about the library in that building. Does it still look the same? Does the librarian still show off her karate moves? And is there another kid like me, shelving books and dreaming of a future they'd never thought of before?
I hope so.
Love this! Just revisited my TINY childhood library recently. Such an important, foundational thing!