BY MARGARET LANGSTAFF

This is a true story, one that could show up in your local newspaper under the headline, "Neglected, Delinquent Child Saved from Bleak Future by Books" or "When All Else Fails, Send 'Em to the Library."

Jason is 14 years old, small and immature for his age, and a survivor of the Florida foster care system. He has two older sisters, 16 and 18, and all three of them were placed in foster care at an early age because their mother had a serious drug problem and neglected them. Their foster mother, although a dramatic improvement over their real mom, is a middle aged four-time divorcee who never graduated from high school. She manipulates and exploits the foster care system with an eye to creating positive cash flow from these kids. In her view, each kid represents a revenue stream by virtue of the state-provided child support payments she receives. For this to work, of course, her expenses for the children have to be kept well below the modest sum she is paid to take care of them. This she achieves handily month in, month out.

Jason is a cute, spirited, smart kid with ADD, and in spite of his disadvantages, has learned to play the system to his own advantage, but with an ironic twist: through general hell raising, school discipline and expulsion, he has become essentially a ward of school librarians. He hates school because it is boring and he is easily bored. So he causes trouble and is soundly and routinely punished by being sent to the library where he is forced to sort, shelve and sometimes even read, books.

The result of this constant exposure to such temptation is that he has become a "book addict." He is an avid and powerful reader, plowing through one to three books a day, depending on his supply. He is also a loquacious and opinionated literary critic. Case in point: when I first met him, I told him he reminded me of Tom Sawyer. His reply, "Yeah, but Huckleberry Finn is a better book, if you ask me. Mark Twain is such a gas. What a dude." With that, he stole my heart.

Jason is finishing up the Anne Rice oeuvre these days and is casting around for other books worthy of his attention. As of this very minute, he thinks the best book ever written was the first Harry Potter book. That may change. We went to a bookstore (where he acted like he owned the place) and I bought him the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia

Regardless of his reading precocity, Jason will be repeating the sixth grade for the fourth time this fall in an alternative school. His foster mother "just can't do anything with him." So while reading at a high school senior level, he will again spend his school days with other problem kids and get sent to the library. But at least he can read, loves to read, and for that alone has a shot at surviving and making something of himself. His world is not circumscribed by the four walls of the double-wide he and his family of nine inhabit. He can imagine other worlds because he has flown on the wings of many writers' imaginations and has seen that the horizon can go "ever onward." And that is where he aims to go.

God bless those stern school librarians.

Margaret Langstaff writes about books and the book business for several periodicals.