Now that I am in my fifties, I have a new view of heaven on earth--it’s being in a room packed with librarians and teachers who all love my work. Whenever I mention this to non-lit people--the kind who would prefer a room filled with golden glitterati--their faces contort and they mutter that it’s really nice I like what I do.
    I confess that I didn’t fully understand the connectivity of children’s and young adult literature until I won a Newbery Honor medal. My email was flooded with well wishes from teachers and librarians I’d never met, some in places I’d never heard of. I was stunned and struck by the depth of caring in this community of ours.
    My husband works on the computer side of investment banking. When he came to ALA to watch me "hug" my Newbery Honor plaque in public, that man was hugged by hundreds of librarians. Evan turned to me and said, "We don’t hug in banking."
    "It might help," I offered.
    Evan and I have decided that one of the ways to change the world and make it a better place is to have a series of dinners with librarians, teachers, and investment bankers. Everyone needs to hug at least four people and everyone has to talk about a book that meant something to them as a child. There is a depth to childhood that we who work in the arena understand far better than those who don’t.
    Kids get it. They really do.
    Despite what the media says, kids smell hype a mile away. They care about justice and truth. They usually know when they’re being conned.
    And a little child shall lead them--
    But where do we need to be led?
    I would like everyone in this country to go once to a library or teaching conference. It doesn’t have to be a national one. Main meeting attendance isn’t required. What is required is to hang out -- in the hallways, at the convention center where the booths and books are -- and listen.
    What they hear will stir their hearts.
    Teachers spending their own money to buy books for students in need; talking about the young people with special problems in their classes. Librarians challenging the system to keep the libraries open longer, finding new ways to get the word out on books, looking for ways to bring the community in to read a story and share it together -- everyone struggling to reduce the ranks of non-readers.
    Sometimes the hype of life gets too much. Everything I see is the hugest, the coolest, the expert answer of the week. But in this over-advertised cyber-saturated age, books still move from hand to hand and heart to heart.
    Thank God for that. Because in times as trying as these, we all need stories from the heart to help us through.