In my memory, my elementary school was small and standard for a poorer, rural Mississippi town. The brick was the color of an old scab. There were three buildings: an auditorium with classrooms, a newer structure with squat ceilings and cinder-block walls, and an ancient cafeteria that had been there since my mother's time. She was one of the first Black students to attend the school when it was integrated in the '60s. I'd imagine 20 years later, as I ate my packed lunch in the cafeteria, that slant-walled building looked much the same as it did back then: all peeling, sun-bleached wood, with box fans going strong in the windows because it had no central air or heat. Even though it was old and dingy, I loved my school. I loved the tiny square playground where I spent most of my recess hours, surrounded by tall pine trees in an amphitheater of living green. I spent long moments looking up at their crowned heads, trying to discern some dialogue in the way they swayed in the wind or nodded in the breeze. I loved the small courtyard near the cafeteria. It was where I first learned that if I stood very still and studied the sky, the clouds would move like great boats overhead, casting their cool shadows on the concrete and grass.

But I discovered real metaphor and imagery in the tiny library. Allowing myself to fall into a book felt effortless and immersive, like jumping off a downed tree trunk into a brown, swiftly moving river. Every story was a subsummation.

I snuck through the streets of New York with Harriet the Spy, eavesdropping in dumbwaiters. I searched the seas with Pippi Longstocking to find her missing, maybe dead, father. I rode an old, lame horse with a lonely girl named Aerin, who mourns her absent father and dead mother while she hunts dragons in The Hero and the Crown. In all my reading, I muddled along with the characters as they weathered loss and disorientation-weighty subjects for any child. But I always felt safe in the cradle of the story. The care the authors put into their storytelling made me feel that way, even...