One day in and Dewey’s already making the DCPL excited and teary.

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We are at $1,440 as of about 5 minutes ago – I’m getting a notification about every 5-10 minutes!

Here’s a very sweet note we just got from one of the donors:

In Honor of Louise Reid, my first school librarian. And also Mom.

Might be fun to ask people to tell their first library / librarian story in the “in honor of” section – along with Dewey / DC Rollergirls, of course. I bet we’d get some great feedback!

Again, we’re thrilled – and thank you so much!!

I hope you don’t mind my updates – this is exciting![/readermail]

So feel free to share with the DCPL Foundation a story about your first library or librarian, either in the comments here below, or when you make a donation to the DCPL.

I’ve lived in my new neighborhood for just about a year now, but I hadn’t had a chance to get to the nearby library. Yesterday I decided to check it out. Just take a look, no need to browse or pick anything out… and left with three books. I also saw dads helping their daughters with homework, lots of computers being used for writing resumes and sending job applications, a healthy selection of Young Adult novels (and graphic novels — including manga!), and even a copy of one of my own novels.

And then I narrated: “I can’t wait to take my mom here!”

But it’s true. My love of libraries came from my mother’s love of supporting my endless questioning, my unquenchable thirst for knowledge. When I was three and wanted to know what sign language was, she took me straight to the library and taught us both the ASL alphabet. I’ve known it for as long as I can remember. We’d go once or twice a week to the library to fill up on new stories, get excited about finding more books by a certain author, and help each other with our giant stacks of books we couldn’t wait to get home.

We still get that way about books, Mom and I. She gets so excited about a new Stephen King, you’d think he was a cousin of ours. It took a little prodding, but she did read the Hunger Games trilogy and is now the cool kid on her block, able to loan it to all of the johnny-come-lately friends and family members just now hearing about it.

All of this appreciation for books and how they bring people together started with a love of the library. It is heartbreaking to think every kid doesn’t get this chance, this experience. It is, in fact, the entire point of the DC STAR program — teaching families that love is in sharing storytime.

That’s why I started what has become the Dewey Donation System, and that’s why whenever you help these book drives I get pretty emotional. Because it feels like you understand me, and as someone who went to thirteen schools and used to move every six months and the only place that ever felt like home when I was a kid was the library… feeling like someone understands you is a really big deal.

So thanks, and if you haven’t hugged your local library in a while, you might want to check in. I bet they’ve got something there you’ve been looking for.