And, uh, he told us he was a big fan of the original host.

Oh, I absolutely did.

LeVar Burton is one of my all-time favorite human beings in the entire world.

That's how I saw myself as a reader.

I was like, "Hey, this guy makes it so fun.

He's having all these zany adventures." I was homeschooled, so my, my, my mom and dad raised us on Roots.

So I was like, "Why is a Roots guy on Reading Rainbow?"

Do you have, like, a magic book that you have in your pocket, metaphorically speaking, to whip out and, and, like, convert that kid into a reader?

[laughs]

I don't know how she did it, but she is a true star of our picture book, I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy.

It just exudes the joy that every person, uh, disabled, mentally ill, autistic, dyslexic, ADHD, you belong.

You have, you have a joyful self when you're at the library, and that just shines in her illustrations.

What does that feel like? 'Cause like a lot of people, you grew up watching the show.

I, I love the show.

I honestly believe I'm the biggest Reading Rainbow fan in the entire world.

I adore and love LeVar Burton.

But do you see it as you said, a conversation starter? How do you see that from the self to everybody else?

You know, I think that's what's fun about reading is there's so many different ways to do it.

It can be solitary.

It can be individual.

You could be in your room.

You could be in your house or your apartment.

Or you could also join a book club.

in a way that's really very few people would do it and i think many people are scared to talk about that you know like about your emotional vulnerability yeah did you feel scared to do that at first and like how do you do you do it all the time which is really it's interesting

Why are libraries so important to you?

Libraries are so important to me because I grew up loving libraries.

I have a library card tattooed on me.

I've had a library card since I was, since I was five years old.

Um, I was very shy.

I'm still shy as an adult, but libraries saved my life.

Um, I'm still struggling today, but I'm alive because of librarians, children's librarians-

E- e- explain a little of that to me.

Do you have, like, a magic book that you have in your pocket, metaphorically speaking, to whip out and, and, like, convert that kid into a reader?

You know what? I, it's, I don't have necessarily a, necessarily a magic book, but I think I love...

I f- I found that so many kids, um, always have what they love on their person.

You know, they'll have a Spider-Man hat, or, um, nowadays they have K-pop Demon Hunter shirts, or, um, the Super Bowl's coming up.

They'll be rocking their Patriots jerseys or their, uh, or their Seahawk jerseys.

And I just start talking about that, and I'm like, "Did you know that there's football books? There's basketball books.

There's actually books about K-pop demon hunters." Um, I'm, I'm pretty sure there's someone out there trying to write a Bad Bunny book, um, as we, as we speak.

Yes.

And so when you got this call, you thought it was a joke? I really thought

it was a joke.

I very much thought it was a joke.

I had no idea.

I had to look everybody up to make sure they were legit, that it was actually something that might actually happen.

And then I lost my mind.

I told my mom and dad, even though I probably wasn't supposed to, but you have to tell your grownups what's happening in life.

How important are librarians to our culture?