I love books, I read all the time. It didn’t start out that way. When I was a little kid, I went to a country school and you had to know how to read proficiently by the time you left kindergarten. And I had a really hard time when I first started learning to read. And I remember my mother worked nights, and she would come home in the morning from the hospital and, and I had to read to her before I went to school and I can’t even imagine the torture that must have been for her after working all night, having to listen to somebody who did not read well read to her, out of a children’s book no less.
So anyway, I had kind of a rough start and I never got into it, reading, myself. But I loved to be read to, ’cause I can remember at school frequently, grade school teachers would have a book that they would read every day to the students and I just absolutely loved it.
In fact, that’s the first time I ever heard Anne of Green Gables, was from a teacher that read to us every afternoon. And it was just amazing, I just loved that, but I couldn’t get myself to read proficiently enough that I could get into, you know, feeling the story, feeling part of the story, until I probably was, gosh, I don’t know, third or fourth grade, maybe, that my aunt, one of my aunts sent me a Bobbsey Twin book for Christmas. And I was not that thrilled about it, but, you know, I was gracious.
And later during the winter, I remember this so clear, that one time I was, I think it was a Sunday afternoon. Everybody in my family was curled up at a chair or someplace wrapped up in a blanket, ’cause it was usually cold in the house in the wintertime, reading a book. And I didn’t have anybody to play with and I didn’t know what to do with myself, and then I remembered that book that my aunt had given me, The Bobbsey Twins. And so I thought, “Well, I’ll give it a try.” And so I sat down with that book, and I like to say the magic happened. The magic happened for me that I had learned to read well enough that I was able to, instead of just focusing on words, that I could focus on the story and on what was happening and how people were feeling and, and what things looked like. And it was like the magic happened and I was there. And from that moment on I was hooked. I loved to read and I read everything I could get my hands on.