Dalbir Kaur Madan “The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance” – Libba Bray Library and books are my first love. Since the time I remember, books transported me to other worlds and each time I came back, my thinking was either challenged or confirmed or I was left wanting more…. My journey at One Up library, bookstudio and learning lab, started as a parent raising two curious children who loved learning. My children’s birth-city Amritsar, is a historical city, where education is still driven by traditional methodology and a myopic view towards reading. Raising two young readers in 2011, aged 12 and 15, my quest was to create a safe space with books and open a learning environment for readers to share, discuss, criticize and learn from books and have conversations with enabling adults who love books. I personally feel and believe that even though school teaches every child to read and design their literate life, it is through reading that we find ourselves and become more human. I believe that libraries are ateliers of learning and librarians perform the role of an atelierista in developing each child’s reading process. Libraries and reading have the power to develop and re-design the learning journey of each child. Schools should be measured by the content and programs they run in their libraries. Our role as parents and educators is to help every child develop the skills of critical reading and thinking. Even though ideas and dreams are powerful and beautiful, reality is hard and challenging. When I started One Up Library and Bookstore in 2011 it opened a Pandora’s box of questions, confusions and challenges for me as a reader and learner. The beauty is that today the library and my readers have helped me to embrace these confusions, questions and challenges as a part of my learning to be a curator of reading lives. Every moment we face challenges. Parents and children enter the library with pre-conceived notions about reading – reading for pleasure, for purpose, for academic outcomes, for English language proficiency, for attention, for behaviour, for self-engagement, for reflection, for a safe place to park your kid for a few hours and