Jacob Gerszten is one unusual 9-year-old.

I knew that before I met him last week, because I'd already run his story past my own kids.

Our two daughters, who are 9 and a couple of days shy of 8, were perusing fliers they'd gotten in school about books for sale. The older girl had circled too many, and we were telling her she needed to shrink her list because a handful of books from the last flier order had arrived only recently. Besides, she could always go to the library.

She was still pushing hard for a literary bonanza when I decided to play my Jacob Gerszten card. I told her there was a boy her age in Pittsburgh who had donated nearly all his life savings, more than $300, to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh just so everyone could read more books.

"Why couldn't the kid give me some?" she wondered. "Then I could buy these."

Not exactly the lesson I was trying to teach her, but then I wasn't after the Animal Ark Dog Pack, a trio of "ter-ruff-ic" tales that comes with a "Top Dog" necklace for only $9.95. I mean, c'mon.

I told that story when I reached the Gerszten home in Squirrel Hill, on the eastern edge of Schenley Park, the next afternoon. Jacob and his 8-year-old sister, Marcella, had just walked home from St. Edmund's Academy and were still in their uniforms. Their mother, Kristina, was there, too.

Jacob told me his reason for giving was pretty simple. He visits the library almost every weekend, either the Squirrel Hill branch or the main branch in Oakland. If it's the latter, the family often walks through the park and takes the bus back, loaded down with the histories, mysteries, science fiction and adventure stories he devours. He polished off that last Harry Potter novel, a loan from a baby sitter, in two days.

"We weren't too happy about that," his mother said. "He didn't do anything else."

It was the library's annual report last spring that turned Jacob to philanthropy, though. He had taken it to his room and was reading it thoroughly when he came to the long list of donors' names. It struck him that he should step up, too. He'd been hitting the library since he was a toddler squatting down for story time. So he went to his mom, who, with his father Peter, is a longtime donor. Jacob told her he wanted to give all he had from a short lifetime of allowances, lemonade stands and relatives' gifts.

She asked if he was sure, and he was. So she agreed, and both were surprised when, instead of a single line on the next newsletter's donors page, Jacob was put in the donor spotlight with a photo and the headline "Youngest Donor on Record."

Jacob gets a kick out of the attention, of course. His fourth-grade teacher, Amber Scalise, read the newsletter to the class, and she says his classmates broke into spontaneous applause. Jacob's best friend told him he'd been inspired to make a donation somewhere, though he hasn't decided where.

His $320 gift came with no strings. "I didn't really have a use for that money," he says, but figures the library "may get a book I might want to read." He's still finding new things in the big Oakland building. Recently, he and his father explored the third floor, where he'd never been, to check the archives on E. J. Taylor, who'd lived in their house a long time ago.

"He was the chief engineer of the Pittsburgh and Rochester Coal Co.," Jacob wanted me to know.

When I talked to my girls after meeting Jacob, they said he was pretty cool.

"He's a nice, cool, caring kid," the third-grader said.

"Yeah, he's pretty generous," the fourth-grader agreed. "He rocks."

But she said I had to leave her name out of this, and thenwas a bit miffed when I wouldn't go along with an alias, either. Like Jacob, she loves the fiction section.