"not because they teach that there are dragons, but because they teach that dragons can be overcome"

Cherie Priest (author) is posting today a link to a program to send books to New Orleans prisoners. (I quote the title from her post.) The post talking about the program, "Books2Prisoners", is here. And I quote from that post:

So, this is the part where I tell you that books matter (but you already know that) and ask you please to do something with the many free books you have that might just make the world a better place. I'm not naive - I know that a book can not cure poverty, or broken homes or a crappy education or gang violence. But I'm also not a fool and I do know that without some movement towards positive change, nothing will happen at all. It's easy to shake your head and turn off the news and go back to your middle class lifestyle with all of its clean countertops, minivans and trips to the Gap. This is the harder part, and believe me, I'm no easier to motivate than anyone else, but I feel like with the world going to hell in a handbasket, I have to do something - we all have to do something.

This project resonates so strongly with me because I come from a life that needed the library desperately, that saw one comic book purchase every payday (every two weeks) because that was all my parents could afford. I spent all year waiting for Christmas and the chance to own some books of my own. We weren't poor, but we were close - we could see it and feel it and taste it. We lived paycheck to paycheck and I have never forgotten how close you can be to having nothing; how small the distance is from security to loss.

A book is just a book - on one level. But it's also the whole world if you haven't seen it before, it's places and people and ideas you never knew existed. Every great reader out there knows a book can change everything when it is the right book at the right time.