(by Michael Dzwonkowski) 

One of my earliest memories of us goes back to the days when we lived in Town-n-Country. It was summertime and you took me to a new place, the library. It was a small space in a strip mall on the corner of Hillsborough Ave and Town n Country Blvd. You always had books for me at home, Dr. Seuss- Go Dog Go, ABC & 123, Green Eggs & Ham, to name a few. You read to me all time which helped me learn to read even before I began my formal education. You and I shared an intimate relationship with the printed word.

Stepping through that diminutive door into my first library was magical. My eyes opened to the endless possibilities of life. You ushered me into the children’s section letting me loose to browse the books on my own (telling me to take my time and that you would be ‘just over there’ finding a book for you to read). I started looking through the books that were similar to the ones we had at home, finding hundreds of them. When you retuned you found me on the floor with a half a dozen or so books trying to figure out which one to read first. That’s when you told me we could borrow these books and bring them home. “They wouldn’t be ours but we could have them for a few weeks at home to read”. I was ecstatic and I borrowed every one.

It didn’t take long to read those borrowed books and we found ourselves back at the library the next week and every week after all summer long. I quickly outgrew the picture books and found the young adult section where the books were filled with words more than pictures. You explained to me that in these books we (the readers) were required to make our own pictures in our minds. It was the author’s duty to paint those pictures with words and the reader’s imagination to create them. You let me pick out one of these new books for us to read together. That first book was “Stuart Little.” It was the cover that captivated my young imagination, a little mouse paddling a canoe through the grass on a river. That week we explored Stuart’s story together. It only took a few days to read that story. I remember reading it over and over again myself before we were able to return to the library for more. These new books were amazing, I was able to travel to far off lands, into outer space and beyond. Soon one book became three and then six and more. My thirst for reading has never been quenched.