Liz Danzico didn't like books when she was a kid. She used to pretend-read them, pushing them around her shelves and messing their pages until they looked read. Then one evening she found an abandoned book tossed onto the stoop in her New York neighbourhood.

For some reason, she picked it up and took it home. The pages were thin and damp, so she peeled them apart and put paper towels between them as she read, all 202 pages of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Thirty years later, the writer, teacher and National Public Radio creative director loves books the way she loves her dog, her bicycle and ice-cream: "I've known love that can only endure between a human being and a text."

It's a lovely romantic story, but I wish kids such as Danzico didn't have to discover books that way. I don't know if parents or teachers or librarians tried to help her, but if they did, it wasn't enough. And I worry about that, now more than ever.

Our traditional institutions for helping children and young people get into books are under threat and I'm not convinced we have good replacements. Recently the Australian Centre for Youth Literature was quietly wound up, and although the State Library of Victoria has pledged to continue teen programming, the closure has caused much disquiet among teachers, parents, writers and young readers.