Photo by Travis Pratt Maggie Tighe presented a check for $10,000 to the library at her alma mater, Monacacy Middle School, after winning the “Letters to Literacy” contest.

The gift came from the Maryland Humanities Council and a national contest called Letters about Literature, which invites students in grades 4-12 to write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre, explaining how that author's work changed the student's way of thinking. National winners are given Reading Promotion Grants of up to $10,000 to give to their community or school library.

Tighe's letter to "Brave New World" author Aldous Huxley, who died in 1963, was selected as one of six national winners from more than 60,000 entries.

Tighe, 16, gave her winnings to the middle school library because she knows the years after elementary school are crucial to getting kids interested in reading and preparing them for high school.

"I first read "Brave New World" in middle school," she wrote to Huxley. "I tore through it fascinated by how otherworldly this utopia seemed."

As a middle schooler, she wrote, she had concentrated on the futuristic setting and plot. But when she re-read the 1932 novel in high school, she recognized its underlying societal and class themes, and began to understand that to appreciate life one has to appreciate all of life -- not just the pleasant "soma" moments from Huxley's so-called utopia.

"I've learned how there are good and bad sides of the same thing," she said. "And good things, without the bad, might otherwise not be so great."

Letters About Literature, a national program of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, is operated locally by the Maryland Center for the Book.

As a national winner, Tighe received a $500 Target gift card.

"I'm planning on spending it on things for my college dorm," said Tighe, a 4.0 student, who is looking at Princeton, Georgetown and Loyola as she considers a major in philosophy or theology. She is a member of TJ's "It's Academic" team and the National Honor Society. She also plays the piano.

Past sources of inspiration to students, according to the Maryland Humanities Council website, include Lois Lowry, Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry, Beverly Naidoo, Sharon Creech, J.K. Rowling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, and Elie Wiesel.

"Mr. Huxley, your book opened my eyes to a new way of looking at the world," Tighe wrote. "Thank you for this gift."