SOLVED. YA A young orphan (possibly named Gnome) becomes a wizard's apprentice, cleans a library and uses infuses crystals with magic

[Ellen]

Hi! I'm a librarian and I had a patron come in looking for a book and these are the details he gave me. I am stumped! Has anyone read this book?

He read this when he was a young teenager (late 90s-early 2000s but not later than 2006ish). He thought it was named "Gnome's Story" but we have found nothing under that.
In his memory, these are the details:
The main character was an orphan boy named Gnome (or some variation of that name) who was apprenticed to a wizard. As a part of his work, he had to clean the wizard's very dirty library.

A part of the magic in this book was infusing crystals with magic. The wizard becomes jealous of the main character because the boy is better than him at magic.

Towards the end of the book, they go to another town where they encounter either other wizards/magic creatures and Gnome has to fight them and succeeds.

He thought it was either a YA or Adult book. It was likely at least 200+ pages.

Language was English and he checked this out from a library in the USA when he originally read it.

I hope someone recognizes this plot!

[Ellen]

I found it myself but just in case anyone else comes looking for this book: The Starstone