I was addicted to the library when I was a kid growing up in Tupper Lake, an Adirondack town (population 3,300). Each visit, I made a point to withdraw a carefully selected fiction, nonfiction, and something fun and crazy like The Guiness Book of World Records, The Book of Lists, or a facsimile of the the 19th century Sears and Roebuck catalogue. I'd read them cover-to-cover over the week, then return for more. As a teen, I discovered bookstore bliss, especially relishing the ones that sold used books.Libraries and bookstores have always been a kind of narcotic for me, and this one reason why I started BookSmiles, a nonprofit born in my garage in 2017 that has grown into one of the largest kids bookbank of its kind in the USA. We now distribute over 100,000 books each month to teachers and kids who need them most!The mission? We are enabling enable every child in the Philadelphia/NJ region to grow up with access to a library of their own, making sure to upcycle used books, diverting them from the landfill, pulpers, or the incinerators. It's insanity to destroy used books when millions of kids need them in their hands and homes. Serving in the Navy, working as a Kinko's manager, and spending a generation teaching in a low-income school district have inspired me to build BookSmiles.“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture."— Edgar Schein