I’ve only said it a hundred times that readers advisory is the reason I love being a high school librarian.

And last week, I had a delightful interaction with a student who I had helped maybe once or twice before. In a school of 2,600 students there are the repeat customers and those that come in intermittently and while I don’t remember her name, the face time with her was one of my favorites. I don’t even remember how it started but likely was when I told her that if she needed any help to let me know as she was walking in and out of the shelves. She told me what she was looking for by name dropping a few specific titles to which I asked what she most liked about them.

And then she took notes.

She had a hand-sized Steno notebook, the ones you see police detectives using in those old Law and Order episodes and as I pulled a book off the shelf and set it on top to talk about, she pulled out the notebook and took notes. We went back and forth on about six or seven titles before I checked in about whether she wanted time to look back at them and pick which ones she was going to take and if none of them worked, we could talk again.

I was pulled away from the desk a few minutes later, so I don’t know which ones she checked out with our teaching assistant, but I will remember her handheld Steno notebook and how she took notes on titles and authors.

In a world where adults are quick to say that teens have their noses glued to their smartphones and they don’t read, this girl had a Steno notebook looking for books.