A Library Card Can Do More Than Money Ever Will

There's an inspiring story from the New York Times bestselling author Gary Paulsen, and it changed how I think about spending time in libraries.

Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.

The bestselling author Gary Paulsen once told a room full of teachers that a librarian saved his life.

He explained that home wasn’t safe. His parents drank, they fought, and he spent hours in the woods instead, hunting, fishing, and sleeping outside when he could.

But winters in Minnesota were harsh. The cold pushed him to look for shelter. One afternoon, he noticed a building lit from the inside. He opened the door.

It was the local library.

At first, he only went inside the library to get warm. A chair by the heat and four walls. And the librarian didn’t press him, nor tell him to leave. Then one day, she gave him a card. Told him he could borrow books. Later, she began recommending titles, one after another.

Paulsen said his life improved shortly after. He started reading and he kept coming back. And what stuck with him wasn’t only the books, but the fact that someone noticed him and cared without asking for anything in return.

Years later, those books inspired him to write stories of his own. And when people asked how he became a writer, he always gave the same answer.

“A librarian saved my life.”

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I don’t have a story as memorable or inspiring as Paulsen’s, but I know what he meant.

My family often couldn’t afford to buy new books, so we went to the library instead. Mom parked the car out front, and I ran straight to the children’s section. Plastic covers on every book, barcodes taped to the spines.

Most weekends we did the same thing. I’d grab a chair and sit for hours. Nobody asked what I was working on. Nobody told me to leave.

That was the difference compared to everywhere else.

In school, I was told to sit on the sidelines. In shops, I had to keep my hands in my pockets so I didn’t break anything because of my dyspraxic tendency to be clumsy. At home, there were chores waiting. In the library, I could just sit and get lost in my imagination.

The books weren’t new. Covers were torn, pages bent, sometimes the due date slips still showed rows of stamped ink. I checked them out anyway and carried them home in a plastic bag from the front desk.

My parents divorced when I was young, and we moved every two or three years after that. New houses, new schools, new rules to figure out. Nothing stayed the same for long. So, for a while, that library card in my pocket was the only thing with my name on it that felt permanent.

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Last month, I went into my local library on a Tuesday afternoon. Every table was full. A group of teenagers traded graphic novels at one end. A man in a work jacket typed on a public computer.

I walked past the new releases section and saw a row of books with names I knew. Writers who once sat at the same kind of desk I was sitting at, trying to get a draft right. Their work was being picked up by strangers who didn’t have to spend a penny to read it.

That’s the part most people miss.

Libraries aren’t just for readers. They’re for authors too. A book that might sit unnoticed in a normal bookstore can get passed from hand to hand in a library, read by hundreds of people in the same town.

And libraries are for the community around them, as well. The student without Wi-Fi at home. The job seeker filling out forms. The parent who needs a safe place to bring their kids after school. Every chair, every shelf, proves the same point.

The library belongs to all of us who walk in.