Author: Tahneer Oksman

There’s a famous scene in Betty Smith’s bestselling coming-of-age novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in which Smith describes the relationship her protagonist, 11-year-old Francie Nolan, has with her local public library: “Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world.” I couldn’t help but think of little Francie Nolan – who, like Smith, grew up in the tenements of Brooklyn in the early 20th century and aimed, as a young girl, to read every book she could find – as I tore…