Skinny Myeongja suffers from tuberculosis. Yet because of legs that turn into lightning the moment she runs, she is chosen as her school's representative track athlete. As the eldest daughter in a poor family, Myeongja must look after her younger siblings and do housework, on top of practicing for races—it's more than she can bear some days. Then one day, she discovers a mysterious classroom filled with books, and her heart begins to flutter with excitement. Myeongja becomes utterly absorbed in the unfamiliar stories inside those books, devouring them the way a caterpillar nibbles through leaves. When her teacher notices her staying behind alone to read until dusk, he asks her to take charge of the classroom key. Being entrusted with the key to the library that the entire school uses feels thrilling and important just to imagine. But with track practice and cooking dinner at home to worry about, Myeongja falls into deep thought about whether she can take on this responsibility. Set against the backdrop of the 1970s, an era when nearly everyone was poor, this is the autobiographical story of children's author Hwang Sun-mi, who held onto her dream of becoming a writer and ultimately made it come true. "I'm only two years older than Myeongseon, but Mom makes me do everything—cooking, cleaning, laundry, watching my siblings, even going to the clinic to pick up medicine. And on top of all that, I'm supposed to get good grades too. If I die young, it will definitely be from the unfairness of it all." —from page 45