I think I was in third grade when I discovered Nancy Drew on a bookshelf at my grandmother’s house. The book, Secret of the Old Clock, had been my mother’s, and it had a solid blue cover beneath a colorful dust jacket.  As soon as I read it, I was hooked.

It was a thrilling moment, a week or so later, when my mother took me to the library and pointed out an entire bookcase FULL of Nancy Drew mysteries… a bookcase FULL of cheerful yellow spines… spines holding pages that would occupy me for hundreds of hours to come. I loved how smart Nancy was, and I loved turning the pages to find out the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW of each mystery.

Before too long, I had finished every book in the series. But at that same library, right next to the shelf of yellow…