Well, this is all very nice. The good news keeps coming.

I’m very happy to report that SETTING FREE THE KITES has been chosen as “one of the top ten books published this month that librarians across the country love,” through the Library Reads program. This news makes me particularly delighted because I am passionate about libraries.

I have a beautiful framed picture on my desk. The image is a silhouette of an open book, whose pages have been drawn with feathers, so that they look like the wings of a bird. Next to the picture is a quotation from Jorge Luis Borges, which reads: “I have always imagined paradise will be a kind of library.” It’s a sentiment I love. Libraries are wonderlands, places of enchantment – and, yes, if you’re a bookish sort, something of a paradise.

I’m especially fond of our local library, the Daniel Boone Regional Library. It’s a warm, stimulating, vibrant place. I wrote the opening chapters of A GOOD AMERICAN tucked away at one of the desks on the second floor. I’ve attended countless seminars, meetings, books sales, and discussions there. (I’m giving a talk there about the new book on April 6.) My daughter and I visit almost every week. She’s eleven, and loves to disappear into the Young Adult section, finally emerging with a stack of books almost as tall as she is. It’s cheerful and always busy, full of families, smiling staff, and people chatting happily at the tables of the little café just inside the front door.

Not entirely coincidentally, we live a ten-minute walk away.

A good library can be the heart and soul of a community. After the terrible events that unfolded in Ferguson two summers ago, one of the most heart-warming stories that came out of that awful time was about the Ferguson Municipal Public Library. The director of the library (and its sole full-time employee) had been in the job for all of five weeks when Michael Brown was shot. As turmoil unfolded on the streets, he understood that the city needed the library more than ever, and he courageously kept the doors open when most of the public facilities in the town shut down. It became a sanctuary, a place of calm and safety. When the public schools closed, an improvised day care center was set up there, where children went to learn. After the violence was over, the library helped heal the community’s collective wounds by creating “Healing Kits”, backpacks with information about civil rights history, resources for coping with emotional trauma, and a teddy bear. (Residents could read what they needed and return the backpacks – but they got to keep the teddy bear.) In recognition of all this, the Ferguson Municipal Public Library was named U.S. Library of the Year in 2015.

All of which is to say: libraries are about so much more than just books. They are a crucial part of the community that surrounds them, and a reflection of that community. If you’ve not been to your local library lately, do yourself a favor and pay a visit. There are whole worlds waiting for you inside those doors. A library card is better than a passport. Wherever you want to go, there’s a book to take you there.