Librarians change Lives - Gary Paulsen

I had to post this for all to read.
This is from Services in Schools by Miss Maple about Gary Paulsen's Life.

Many of us spent the holidays hunkered down and watching snowflakes drift past our windows, but Carrie Bouffard trotted off to Los Angeles to attend the 40^th annual conference of the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators.
Being in the same room as Judy Blume has left her a little dazed (and with a dopey grin on her face), but I managed to get her to tell me about her most inspiring moment:
“All of the speakers were amazing, but I found Gary Paulsen to be the most inspirational speaker there. I have long been a fan of Hatchet, and Winterdance (his autobiographical tale of his first Iditarod) is one of my absolute favourite books, so I was prepared to be impressed.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the tragic tale of Paulsen’s early life. He described himself as a kid who didn’t just fall through the cracks but was “hammered through them.” His parents were both alcoholics and by the time he was ten years old he was spending much of his time living in the woods alone, where he ran trap lines to feed himself: “All that stuff in ‘Hatchet’ is true. It’s all stuff I’ve done.”
He used to wait until the bars closed each night and then beg the drunks for money (or rob them). One night he went into the public library to get warm, and his life changed.
The librarian signed him up for a library card and gave him a book. His parents and their problems were well known in the small town, but she gave him a card anyway and she even spelled his name right. All of a sudden he was “somebody” and he felt “honour-bound” to actually read the book because she had trusted him.
It took him six weeks to read that first book. He was failing school and not a strong reader, but he finished it and went back for another. Months went by and he was up to two or three books a week. “She would give me two Zane Grey westerns and slip in a Dickens.” He became a reader.
That librarian changed Gary Paulsen’s life. Reading changed his life. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house when he told us all that “everything I have become, I owe that woman, and she never even knew.”