A dear friend is a school librarian, a position she loves.

Over the summer, she had to take most of the biographies and encyclopedias off the shelves.

Not because the printed information was outdated but because students seldom use hard-cover books for research.

The internet took the place of the encyclopedias. People no longer want to trudge to the library to find out how many home runs Babe Ruth hit in his career.

They want Google or Siri to instantly and easily give them the answer.

Contrary to popular belief, reading isn’t dead. In fact, people are reading more than ever. They’re just doing so on an electronic tablet or their cell phone.

Many are watching a movie or playing a video game on their devices, but many are discovering the joy in exploring what authors have to say.

One such writer is my great-niece Camryn Jones. Camryn is 10 years old and is a voracious reader. She gets that from her mom, Hope, who usually has a couple of books going and loves to share reviews through her Instagram account.

She passed that love of reading on to her two children, Landon and Camryn, and they’d much rather curl up with a good book instead of a video game. I also credit Hope’s husband, Benji, with loving to read as much as his family.

Hope and Benji also have a Little Red Library in front of their home in North Carolina where they willingly share the books they’ve read with their community.

Most of the books earn a written review by Camryn, and her critiques are as down to earth as this marvelous young lady is.

Camryn has also written over a dozen books. This summer, Camryn attended a writer’s camp, and I was thrilled to read one of the chapters in her book “Unknown.”

The story is about a young knight who’s also an “Unknown,” a mutant that’s rare in the year 8014.

The introduction instantly draws the reader in:

“As the dragon draws nearer, the smoke flies out of his nostrils. One by one by one. It’s a few yards away now. That was my cue. I draw my sword from my belt. It is shining silver.”

I could recap the story of the young knight and the battle, but Camryn tells the tale much more eloquently:

“I am an Unknown. An unknown is a mutant. We are very, very rare. We all have different powers. Mine is healing. I have another. It is really special. My other power is killing.”

She describes the battle between a dragon and this special mutant and how the young knight wants to protect the village from the dragon.

“I stood up and ran towards him. He looked at me with eyes of fear. He knew me. I was Unknown.”

Remember, these words come from a 10-year-old author who knows how to stack suspense, grab the reader and not let go.

I can’t wait to read more of Camryn’s writings. I know she’s going to set the literary world on fire, just like her special Unknown lit up the countryside protecting the village.

This wonderful story blossomed in the mind of a young girl where the ideas were sewn from the pages of books, nurtured by parents and then penned by a smart, independent young lady named Camryn Jones.

Unlike her hero, Camryn will never be an “Unknown.”

She knows right where she’s headed and that’s as far as her imagination will take her.

You go my darling girl.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.