Carla D. Hayden has been executive director of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library since 1993. She has been credited with leading an effort to rebuild the city's library system since then. She served as president of the American Library Association for a one-year term beginning in 2003 and won praise for taking a tough stance against the Patriot Act of 2001, a federal law that forced public libraries to comply with FBI requests about patrons' records.

"Although I have read and loved many books during my life, there are a few that still stand out for a variety of reasons," she says:

"Bright April" / by Marguerite De Angeli / Doubleday / 88 pages / $15.99

As a young child of color I did not realize that this lovely children's book by a noted illustrator was actually groundbreaking in its sympathetic portrayal of a Black family; I only saw and loved the beautiful pictures of a Brownie with pigtails who (I thought) looked like me.

"Little Women" / by Louisa May Alcott / Portland House / 388 pages / $9.95

This classic captured my preteen imagination and was the the first "long" book that I read.

"If Beale Street Could Talk" / by James Baldwin / Vintage / 208 pages / $12.95

A short but beautiful tale of young love, hope and reality by one of the nation's greatest literary figures was the perfect book for my continuing consumption of African-American literature.