“Library magic is quite real when you’re open to it, which fortunately, I am. To make the magic work, you need to open yourself to possibility and serendipity. Then the library gods take over, guiding your eyeballs to writing that might launch you further into whatever madness brought you to the library in the first place.”

Inside a drawer in my office desk sits a stash of manilla envelopes. Inside each are some of the letters I have collected over a span of nearly twenty years from high school students across the U.S. In these writings, the students share with me, often quite poignantly, what impact reading The Kite Runner has had on their lives.

I can say without a doubt that I would not be where I am today—or writing books—without the library and librarians.

“My life, my entire self, wouldn’t be possible without you. From the time I was very young, my mother took me to libraries.”

“Thank you for making me the reader and writer I am today. I’m the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, and as a girl, I often felt torn between worlds. But I felt at home at the library…”