My First Kitewing: How a Library Card Changed Everything

When I was eight, our small town finally got a library, and for me, it might as well have been a spaceship landing in the middle of a cornfield. For months, I pedaled my bike to the construction site and stood by the chain-link fence, watching as the bricks and beams took shape. The skeletal beams whispered promises of a new world looming close over the horizon. Even then, I knew it wasn’t just a building; it was going to be a portal—a doorway to endless worlds. I’d stand there, squinting through the gaps, and imagine the rows of books waiting to take me places I’d never been.

The grand opening felt like Christmas, my birthday, and the county fair all wrapped into one. The librarian, an older woman with kind eyes and a voice as soft as a bedtime story, greeted me at the desk. “Would you like a library card?” she asked, sliding a small form across the counter. She had a knowing smile on her face that told me she could read my excitement. Would I? It felt like she was asking if I wanted a passport to infinity. Of course!

When she handed over that little rectangle of laminated plastic with my name on it, I swear I felt a surge of magic, like being stabbed in the chest with a magic wand. Suddenly, I didn’t just live in a quiet town with more cows than people. I lived in every story, every universe that card could unlock.

I didn’t waste any time. I made my way to the card catalog—those tiny wooden drawers filled with promises—and flipped through the neatly typed cards until I found it: Kiteman of Karanga. I spent more time looking for my first book than I had intended, the library was about to close, but there it was, my first novel. The title jumped out like it had been waiting just for me. I carefully wrote the call number on a slip of paper with one of those stubby pencils in the little wooden boxes and dashed to the shelf, my heart pounding.

The cover showed a young boy clad in tribal leather gear, gliding across an endless desert on a what I would soon learn was called a "kitewing." The back blurb promised exile, survival, and discovery. My eyes widened at the thought of the adventure. I didn’t know it yet, but Karl’s journey was about to mirror my own.

That week, I became Karl. Every night, I slipped under my blanket with a flashlight, the thin beam lighting up the pages like a lighthouse on the edge of a mind storm. I didn't have to sneak and read. My parents encouraged me to take in as many books as possible. But something about it felt dangerous. Karl had been cast out of his homeland for cowardice, a failure branded on his back like a scar. With nothing but a kitewing glider, some provisions and his wits, he soared over a barren desert, fighting wind, sand, and self-doubt.

Would he survive?

I wasn’t exiled, but I was a quiet, small-town kid who didn’t quite know where I fit in. I was bullied quite a bit for being overweight and, thus, had adopted a quiet countenance. When Karl jumped into the air and felt the wind catch his glider, I felt it, too. Every time he found an updraft to lift him higher, I felt the rush in my chest. The lift! And when he discovered a new land across the desert, I knew it wasn’t just Karl who had found something—it was me.

Books weren’t just stories (and they still aren't, to me). They were a way to escape the mundane trials of childhood. They were air pockets, lifting me when I felt like I was stuck on the ground. Each chapter of Kiteman of Karanga was a gust of wind that carried me farther into the sky, farther from everything familiar. By the time I closed the book, I felt like I’d glided halfway across the world and come back stronger, braver, and somehow more complete. I had found myself.

Returning "Kiteman of Karanga" the following week was bittersweet. The librarian smiled with a wisdom only her ilk are keen to as I handed it back. “Did you like it?” she asked. I didn’t have words for how much I had loved it, so I just nodded, already scanning the room for my next adventure.

The library became my launchpad. Every book I borrowed was another kitewing glider, another chance to leap into the unknown. Some books took me to haunted castles; others plunged me into deep oceans or sent me careening through the stars. Every time I walked through those doors, the real world fell away, and I was Karl again, gliding across endless horizons with nothing but imagination and the hum of possibility.

Looking back, that little library was the most magical place I’d ever been. It wasn’t just about the books—it was about the feeling that the whole universe was within reach. I didn’t need money or permission or even a ride from my mom. All I needed was that library card and a bike to bridge that gap between myself and infinity.

When I think about that first day—the creak of the library doors, the smell of paper and new carpet, the thrill of holding Kiteman of Karanga in my hands—I realize it wasn’t just the start of my love for reading. It was the day I learned what it felt like to fly.

Karl may have found a new land in his story, but I found something even better: the knowledge that adventure is always just a page away. That first library card wasn’t just a laminated piece of cardboard. It was a kitewing glider that launched me into the stratosphere of optimistic possibilities, one that still lifts me up every time life feels too small. And so it goes, from book to book, back to that first one, my life has never been the same.

The day I got my library card, I didn’t just walk into a library. I soared.