Last Saturday at Still Waters, I heard a sound I had never heard before, the sound of 30 children, ages 5 -11, turning pages in unison. I had brought copies of my novel Charleston for all the children because I remember how important it was for me as a child to have a book I could write my name in. Stephen asked me to read the last two chapters to the children and asked them to follow along. No chance I thought, and as we sat down, I was wondering how to deal with the inevitable interruptions, loss of attention, chatting with seat mates – how wrong I was. As I read one chapter about a young woman irrationally and desperately looking in familiar places for a man she loved who had just died and another in which she goes to comfort the man’s nine year old son whose mother had abandoned him, there was complete silence, except for the sound of 30 pages being turned at the same time.

Afterwards the children wrote their responses to the story – one boy copied a phrase down and wanted to talk about its meaning, another talked about the loss of his beloved green toy car with windshield wipers that worked, another about fear and the beating of her brain, another about being sad and not knowing the reason why. I felt as if I were a guest musician in an orchestra conducted by Stephen who understood that all of these children wanted and deserved to be heard. I was also impressed with the commitment of the children and parents. It would have been easy to decide to stay inside on this day that was so cold and windy and gray that Manhattan looked like a ghost town. But the children came – hungry to take journeys with books. And the parents came – committed to hope for their children.

Margaret Thornton