Many of us remember when we fell in love with the library. It’s when our passion for reading met with the limitless possibilities that libraries hold, and with a feeling of wonder as unknown lands stretched out before us waiting to be explored through reading.

Hold that moment. Feel the joy stirred by that memory.

Now imagine never getting the chance to experience it.

For too many kids in the Houston Independent School District that is their reality.

As reported by the Chronicle’s Jacob Carpenter, thousands of elementary and middle school students rarely check out books from their campus library, with records showing that in at least seven schools, all with a predominantly low-income population, most students didn’t take a book home in the entire school year. What kind of learning is happening when schoolchildren go an entire year without checking a single book out of the library?

Not enough, that’s clear. For years, HISD has ignored library services, with some principlals making library staff a priority and others clearly not.

A review of HISD operations by the state’s Legislative Budget Board found the district lacks a process to ensure that its libraries’ budget, staff, collection size and collection age align with appropriate standards. That needs to change. It leads to inconsistent services throughout the district, the report found, with some schools offering libraries staffed with certified librarians while other campuses have inadequate or nonexistent services.

Don’t just take our word for it. Hogg Middle School parent Angela Ryden told the editorial board the importance of having a working library cannot be overstated. She saw the difference in how her own children approached reading. Hogg’s commitment to literary efforts, including having a librarian on staff, was one big reason why she wanted to send her kids there, she said.

“A library is not just books in a room; it’s a librarian who is trained, knowledgeable and certified,” Ryden said. “It’s having someone who can work with the kids and the teachers.”

Too many people, parents and taxpayers — and apparently some principals — mistakenly believe all a librarian does is help kids check out books, that his or her knowledge begins and ends at the Dewey Decimal System.

If that were true, paying a full-time librarian to keep the chair warm at the circulation desk would be a luxury for cash-strapped schools. It would make sense that principals would rather use those resources on hiring another teacher. It could almost justify that only a third of HISD schools employ a full-time certified librarian.

But that’s not what a librarian does.

Mary Chance, the librarian at Hogg, doesn’t even check out books — she lets the kids do that. Instead, she spends her time creating and planning literacy opportunities for students. Librarians work closely with teachers, too, with several classes a day visiting the library as part of the curriculum.

“It’s devising programming that keeps kids reading when you have all these other things vying for their time,” she told the board. “It’s organizing author events, book competitions, book clubs, field trips, literacy nights. It’s making reading fun and something to be part of.”

The district needs to do a better job in convincing principals of the benefits of having a library and a certified librarian on staff, as well as ensure that at-risk students receive the same kind of learning opportunities their peers do. Its Library Services Department is meant to be an advocate, and it should find ways to boost library resources and literacy at every school.

Some would point out that not having a library doesn’t mean kids aren’t reading.

HISD has classroom libraries, book assignments, community groups that donate books to students, and language arts teachers. In general, district students do well on the state’s standardized reading tests — but the dozens of titles in a classroom bookshelf can’t compete with the thousands of books in a library. Besides there is so much more to reading than passing a test.

Chance sees her mission as helping kids fall in love with reading. When she succeeds, she expands their learning horizons and boosts their capacity to contribute to an informed society.

Every HISD student should have that opportunity.