At the end of my student teaching, a mother of a boy in my class came to me and presented me with a gift of poetry books to use with my future classes. “I don't know what you did with my son,” the mother said, “but now he wants to go to the library all the time and he checks out stacks of poetry books.” Myers's words had woven their way from him to Sharon Creech, from Sharon Creech to me, and from me to my students and their parents.
Thank you, Walter Dean Myers, for the many lives that have been inspired by your work and for leaving us a library.