My beautiful friend, Elizabeth, has a super blog--she makes you laugh and pause and think, you really ought to check it out. And now she's stumbled onto a great idea, and I'm going to steal borrow snatch it up and perpetuate it here.

The idea: Thanksvember (sorry no graphic--any ideas, my ubercreative friends?), post something for which you are thankful each day in November.

Now, since I missed out on day 1, I think that I will be a bit "cheap" here and make an easy choice. Since this was Elizabeth's idea my first "I'm thankful for" is:

#1 I'm thankful for librarians.

These champions of all things reading often get a bad rap in life. You know the long, pointy nose made into a caricature by the half-glasses snugly pinching the ends of their nose and permanently attached to their person by that decorative rope around their neck. Just for the record, most of the librarians I know don't fit this description.

One excellent example of librarian with whom I have worked, was our excellent example of the profession at Linden-Kildare High School - Kay Stephens. Mrs. Stephens was the consummate librarian. Not only did she know where everything was in her library, she was more than ready to help the students find it (if she had a fault, it was that she did too much of the work for them: when she knew the students were coming and what their topic of study was, she would collect several books for them from the stacks before the students arrived). She was always professional. If I were to pass her on the street today she would smile her big smile and say, "Why hello, Mr. Potter. How are you today?" To top all this off, she voluntarily read manuscripts of my first books for the purposes of making editorial and stylistic suggestions--if you've ever attempted to write a publishable work you know just how important this is. All she asked in return is a copy of the book for her library (I gave her a personal copy as well).

Today, you should thank your librarian--regardless of setting: school, public, or private library--because he or she is there because they are there because they love books, they love students, and they love helping the two find each other.