The Bloggess:

When I was little my favorite places were libraries. You weren’t expected to speak, which was heaven for a shy girl with an anxiety disorder. Thousands of small secret stories were hidden in plain sight all around you, just waiting to be held in your hands and discovered.

As a small girl in rural Texas, I knew that the best chance I had of seeing worlds that would never be open to me, and meeting fantastic people I’d never be bold enough to speak to was through books. I was able to see places that exist (or that had existed, and or that would never exist) through the words of the storytellers whose worlds had been bound up and shared and protected through generations of docent-guardians who called themselves “librarians”.

I still remember when I was first allowed to go on the bus by myself to the Halifax Public Library. There was a huge (to a ten year old) sculpture of Winston Churchhill you had to pass by. The library was a sanctuary to a shy, fat little kid.

No one picked on him there and he could indulge his love of reading. His family couldn’t afford many books but the library let him read anything he wanted to. It’s where he discovered science fiction, history and travel – all things that took him away from his boring, scary life and into the great big world he knew was out there. That little boy still loves libraries and, when he went back home for a visit last year, he made a point to go the library and say hello to Winston — just like he did when he was a kid.