So there's this guy I know. He's a nice guy. He's 10. He's good at building things, great at figuring out how things work, not such a champ at reading.

It was really a drag for a while. The letters didn't make sense to him as sounds. The pieces never melted together into meaning—not easily. He got by, as people do, with context and faking and hating reading. Then he met this other guy:

Now? He likes reading. For real.

And it's not just confined to Alex Rider books either. When he ran out of those, he found something else, and liked it. It doesn't have to be a technical manual anymore, or a book with lots of pictures and barely any text.

The best analogy I can come up with is if you weren't so into eating, and then someone gave you chocolate, and you figured, "Hey—if this is around, I shouldn't give up on chocolate all together."

It's true that it's not just Alex Rider that changed things. He's been getting reading help. And he's growing up and getting older. And something was going to break through one way or another.

But really? While I know all that, all I can think is: Thank you, Alex Rider. You are a gateway drug in the best possible sense.