Photo courtesy of A.S. King

Picture: little cornfield girl, age five—running wild across the dangerous road chasing basketballs a household bully threw there on purpose. Picture her barely getting across before cars rose fast over that blind hill, and one time, picture her slipping down the driveway on her hands and knees, scraping them raw. Hell of an opener for this essay, but also for this child; I’m here today to tell you about the library that saved my life and the librarian who had no idea she was saving it.

Setting: summer vacations 1976-1981

Pan to: a big green barn in the school’s backyard, and the community playground run there every summer weekday; box hockey, ping pong tournaments, crafts, and 10-cent A-Treat sodas. Games of tag. Charades. This is where she learned to braid.

Starring: a few cool adults who kept us safe, who organized free lunch for the kids who needed, and ran games like wiffle ball, capture the flag, and little cornfield girl’s favorite, kickball.

Starring: all the neighborhood kids she only knew from school because the cornfield kept them in. It kept them in. And when little cornfield girl went out, she talked and talked and nothing was wrong at home because if anything was wrong, it would be her fault, she knew that for sure. It would be her fault. So she stayed out as long as she could.

Setting: any summer weekday around 11:40 a.m.

Picture: little cornfield girl, on her bike, riding east through rows of July-height corn, getting slapped in the face by broad, green, pollen-covered leaves, and emerging on the other side to two Dobermans flipping out behind a tall chain-link fence next to a house covered in baby blue vinyl siding. Every single time she approached those Dobermans, she nearly peed her pants, but she got by them, steered down Apple Drive, carefully walk-crossed busy Lorane Road, and arrived at the school library, which was open even though school was closed.

Enter: Ms. Dawn Mohn, school librarian at Lorane Elementary School in Exeter Township, Reading, PA. Dawn Mohn opened that library once a week in the summers, because out there we didn’t have a local library, and even if we did, it was the 1970s and all our parents were at work and we had keys on necklaces around our necks and mine was blue. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to take us to the library, but a matter of when would they? Life was fast, and the closest public was a 20-minute drive.

Picture: little cornfield girl with a few new books, walking from the school to the green barn, putting a dime in the jar, getting an A-Treat birch beer from the old-style fridge and sitting at a picnic table, reading Where the Wild Things Are again and again.

See: in Sendak’s drawings, a place where she belongs.

Listen: birds and hockey sticks on wood, and ping pong volleys.

Smell: the hot dogs being cooked on a Friday afternoon.

See: the sky go pink, little cornfield girl get back on her bike, and ride toward the painted sky, emerge from the field covered in corn pollen, books under her arm.

Feel: the relief of reading.

Feel: the retreating of fear.

Feel.

Time doesn’t exist when you’re inside a book. Time doesn’t exist when you’re inside summer vacation. Time doesn’t exist when you’re inside trauma, either. In some weird way, these experiences overlapped—a slumber party pillow fort made of paper and words and ideas. I wonder if Ms. Mohn knew, armed with the superpowers of encouragement and librarianship, what she was doing for me—just one weird kid out of so many weird kids—building a suit of armor out of books. When school started again, she showed me the nonfiction section—exciting books about countries I wanted to visit, things I wanted to build, and history that made me care. She made me want to never stop learning.

Picture: little cornfield girl growing up, reading more books, and more and more.

Picture: little cornfield girl in front of every typewriter she ever met, learning the magic of the keys, the magic of truth, the magic of staring down every person who ever told her to be quiet.

Listen: the sound of 30 years of writing her own stories, making armor for other kids like her, helping them carve their own escapes with word after word after word.

Setting: the Exeter Community Library, Reading, PA, opened in 1999, one mile from my childhood cornfield.

Setting: March 2019, the book launch for Dig, a book that little cornfield girl wrote.

Enter: Dawn Mohn, retired school librarian.

Enter: Me.

Picture: the hug that waited 40 years to happen.

Feel.

Feel.

Feel.

A.S. King is a two-time Printz Award–winning author.