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[How have libraries helped in your career?]
In different ways.
As a kid, that's where I went every Saturday and I was allowed to check out six books.
I read Edward Eager and Beverly Cleary and
Elizabeth Enright.
I just devoured everything that I could get my hands on.
So as a kid, they fed my love for reading.
As a grown up, librarians are...
you know, they put my books
in the hands of other kids and they support my books,
when they can. Not all do, but most do and they help me to have the courage to
say, "Yes, it's OK. It's OK to write about stuff that might 'get me in trouble,'"
and they'll be there to help me feel better about it.
[On the value of librarians] Well, they should all be given lobster dinners, obviously. They're fabulous.
They write me. Sometimes when I get attacked in an ugly way, I'll get emails that say, "Big giant email of supportiveness,"
And it will be an email from a librarian telling me how much her patrons liked the book or something like that.
And when you go to the conferences, like ALA, the librarians are so passinate about what they do and they're the ones,
especially, I think, this young breed of librarians, I feel like it's a new breed and they're the power librarians
and it's like "We are going to change the world and here's how we're going to do it."
And I've met so many people who are training to be librarians
who say, "I've wanted to do this since I was in high school.
and I want to do it because I know that books change people's lives."