An anthology of letters from young readers to favorite authors about how their books made a significant impact on them describes the feelings of connection, inspiration, and clarity that can be found through reading. The letters are selected from the Letters About Literature program of the Library of Congress Center for the Book.

Foreword / John Y. Cole -- Upper elementary: Finding a friend, finding a voice -- My life is so different from yours / Alessandra Selassie -- I wanted to jump into the story and yell / Hanna Lee -- I became Crispin, living in the Middel Ages / Thomas J. Cienki -- Your poem is my winter / Katja Saana Sinikka Martin -- It's true, nobody wants to talk to nobodies / Erica Langan -- I used to find it hard to forgive my dad / Taaja Immani Draughn -- The only person who didn't understand anything was me / Jayanth Uppaluri -- I can hide from being Jewish. You coudn't / Eliana Kahn -- In my opinion, diversity is a good thing / Chelsea Brown -- When it seems like I'm all alone, I'm really not / Lacie Craven Glidden -- Mushy answers don't feel true / Darius Atefat-Peckham -- Life is a big stinking blob of mess / Gerel Sanzhikov -- Maybe your words weren't meant just for me / Anna Mytko -- The spiralling piece of lead had shattered my heart / Linnea Rain Lentfer -- I have not done anything dangerous or illegal / Davis Klimek -- The keep pile, the throw out pile, and the keep in the attic pile / Becky Miller -- In the future it will be my turn to carry on what my grandparents and parents have fought for / Aleema Kelly -- Even in a sea of clovers, flowers find each other / Hillary V. Schiff -- Middle school: A new awareness -- I left my world behind and entered a new one / Janet Lynne Snow -- I found myself raising my butterbeer mug to that brave boy who lived / Anna Overton -- To my surprise your book was a great inspiration to me - not boring at all / Abbie Beaver -- Queen of up, up / Arielle Moosman -- Because, dearest Anne, because your Kitty understands / Jisoo Choi-- For the first time in my life , I found a part of the German nation with which I could sympathize / Bertina Kurdrin -- All students learn differently / Jonathan Hoff -- I felt a twinge of fear at what I could become / Kara S. Moritz -- Keeping a leash on the minds of school-age children / Shannon Chinn -- For the first time, I heard my own silence / Emmy Goyette -- It was uncomfortable to look into his world and see the pain / Gabriel Ferris -- I still image my bedroom as a hobbit-hole / Elizabeth Chambers -- Gone was the ice skater; gone were the Olympics / Ellis Ball -- It was a hate crime / Margaret Veglahn -- I saw my brother Joe try to fight death / Juliana Gorman -- I'm pressing play / Bailee Stump -- High school: "I am not a nobody" -- Courage to conquer my fears / Anna Marie Wichorek -- I became lost in the Kabul of Amir's childhood / Audrey -- I no longer hide in my flannel sheets waiting for my problems to disappear / Gabrielle Sclafani -- I was weighed down, coated in a layer of plastic / Emily Waller -- It is difficult to reconcile my hate and my love / Hannah DesChamp -- Words seemed weak and cruelly useless / Alexandra McLaughlin -- My mother was my salvation from my father / Joshua Tiprigan -- The judgmental, racist, hateful monter I feared was myself / Xiomara Torres -- My mother sits at her corner in the east, and I at the west / Ayesha Usmani -- I, too take advantage of my mother / Lisa Le -- I needed to please everyone and have everyone pleased with me / Kelsey Bowen -- In order to protect ourselves, we have to hurt our loved ones / Macoy Churchill -- I am not fat anymore. I never was, I suppose / Julia Mueller -- You didn't even try / Abby Swegarden -- I am armed with your words / Aidan Kingwell -- This is a city in need of a Holden Caulfield / Martha Park -- You were so unspeakably right / Devi Acharya -- I consider writing another form of resistance / Annie Schnitzer -- Legacy -- About the Center for the Book.