Your English teacher and your local librarian are as important in a crisis as a fireman or an ambulance driver.
That’s the message to be found inside three recent American memoirs, each written by authors whose lives were saved by literature.
In these times of austerity and repeated threats of shutdowns and sequesters, it’s not easy to be a teacher — especially one who doesn’t teach chemistry or calculus. In the face of reduced budgets, public and school libraries scramble to serve the young people that depend on them.
Thankfully, the three writers I’m thinking of found the teachers and the libraries they needed, despite growing up in different parts of the U.S. during similarly austere times — in the post-tax-revolt era of the 1980s and ’90s.
YES, YES, YES!!!