A good book can be an escape for anyone, a break from the bright lights of technology.
Black ink on a soft, off-white page has the power to take you to a wizarding world or to feel the dust of Mars on your face.
That's the case with Taylor Luke, 19, a resident of Edgemere and a senior at the Catonsville Education Center. Her school specializes in teaching students from Baltimore City and Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel counties with emotional disabilities such as anxiety or bipolar disorder that can interrupt learning.
Luke loves reading. She reads several books a week, and her favorite genres are horror and romance; she's a big fan of the "Twilight" series, a romance story involving vampires. When the first "Twilight" book came out, she read it 13 times, she said.
"It takes me to a different place; it gets me out of reality," Luke said. "It sinks me into their world."
For years now, the education center hasn't had a good library; instead, the one it did have was filled with old books that were worn and irrelevant to students. All that changed this semester, when Luke teamed with her teachers and the Catonsville branch of the county library to bring new interest and new books to the neglected space.
Good books are particularly important for students at the education center who also live at the adjoining Regional Institute of Children and Adolescents-Baltimore, a residential treatment facility for those with emotional, behavioral and learning disabilities. The RICA-Baltimore facility serves the entire state.
Kathy Kelly, a teacher at the Catonsville Education Center, said some students are unable to leave the campus on weekends.
"It helps people get through weekends that can be long," Kelly said.
The paperbacks in the library had peeling spines though. The library was decorated with dated posters of celebrities.
"We had a photo of Oprah Winfrey reading a book that was 30 years old," she said. "We had a photo of Mel Gibson that was at least 30 years old."
The space was neglected.
"Funding is always an issue for our school," Kelly said, "but I think more than that, over the years this was more a classroom than a library."
Instead of using the larger library space, teachers started developing small classroom libraries for students. The teachers didn't really think about the space as anything other than a meeting space, Kelly said.
Luke thought about it.
One day she was looking for a specific title on the shelf and couldn't find it. She suggested to Kelly that the library could be organized by genre, and even mapped out what the new sections could look like on a sheet of paper.
Then there was a push to bring more books in, which only added to the disorganization. The community donated things like children's books and other inappropriate materials for students above the age of 12. Someone donated a book about computers that was published in 1988 — three years before the Internet became available publicly.
Students were interested in reading, Kelly said. "We just didn't have enough to satisfy the interest."
The shelves of the library were cramped and unorganized.
Then the school reached out to the Catonsville branch of the Baltimore County Public Library, which offered to help bring in better books and improve the space. Nicole Wilson and Megan Crews, both from the branch, gave weeks of their time to the library improvement project, Kelly said.
Every time Wilson and Crews came back, they had a box of good books for the students, Kelly said.
"The staff told us, 'You don't want to have things that are older than the kids,'" she said, "and that was a really good revelation for me."
As part of a senior service learning project, Luke helped the staff and librarians sort through the books they already had and discarded out-of-date or inappropriate material. Then, Crews and Wilson helped the school add new books and make the displays more visually appealing.
"Now, any time we have a group come in here, kids are checking out books," Kelly said.
Crews and Wilson taught the school to put some space on the library shelves. Crowded shelves make it harder to find things and are less appealing.
"It's easy to overlook the gems when it's a shelf full of dust collectors," Crews said.
The school library also added a "staff picks" area, with suggestions such as "Holes" by Louis Sachar, about a young man who goes to a juvenile detention after being wrongfully accused of shoplifting, and "Hoot" by Carl Hiaasen, about some friends who try to stop development from destroying a burrowing owl nest.
Luke also created a magazine survey that will be distributed so the library can better serve students.
Luke was at the heart of the project, according to Kelly. It's the first thing similar to a job Luke has had, and it helped build skills she can use outside of school, Kelly said.
Becky Luke, Taylor's mother, said since the library project began, she has seen an improvement in her daughter's self-confidence, sense of responsibility and maturity.
"A child that has learning problems, their self-esteem is usually low," Becky Luke said. "They always feel like they're not doing as well as they should. With her having the job and the responsibility, it gave her more confidence. She felt more self-worth."
The library has also been a benefit to students who live at RICA-Baltimore, the facility attached to the school. The residents can come over in the evening and check out books or use the tables in the library to play games.
"It's a resource students who live here would not be able to have [otherwise]," Kelly said.
A communal library space has advantages over the old system.
"The library is about more than just books," Nicole Wilson said. "Opening it up to the entire school creates a meeting space, a place for people to share ideas and come together with someone who they might not necessarily see because they're not in the same class."
The library is still being improved, Kelly said.
The old posters have been removed and replaced by quotes to encourage mindfulness — a practice encouraged throughout the school.
The next step will be creating a silhouette of a tree on the wall, which will include origami butterflies to draw people's eyes to the top shelf.
Luke is very artistic, according to Kelly, and draws as a form of self-soothing. Luke has drawn signs to illustrate each genre available at the library.
Kelly said they also plan on teaching students how to use the library, since it will be used more. They'll learn how to check out and return books, for example.