I was given my first library card for the grown-up section of the Azusa (California) Public Library when I was in the fourth grade. It was a special moment. I felt like I’d read everything in the kids half of the library and I chafed to read new books. Holding my card out like a passport, I walked tentatively into the grownup section fearful I would be challenged, but I had my card in hand, just in case.

But the doors opened. I entered. A new world beckoned. 

The first book I checked out that day was the novel Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I still remember the orange, pebbly library binding of that book. Cracking open the cover, I read the synopsis and learned the Galactic Empire was falling, and only Hari Seldon’s mathematics could prevent thirty thousand years of anarchy and chart a c…