Shouldn't you be asleep?

I was one of those kids who used to sit up with a book until all hours, until my parents came in to check on me. Then I would feign sleep until they went away and go on reading.

I was lucky that my mother was a librarian (still is in fact) and I was raised in a book friendly environment. I was introduced to such classics as Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan and Stuart Little (all by E. B. White, who also helped pen that bane of English students, Stunk & White).

My father also enjoyed reading aloud to me and subsequently to my sisters. From him I heard all of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which my sister made him read over and over again. I also discovered that great Victorian author, Charles Dodgeson, mostly known as Lewis Carrol, author of Alice in Wonderland, originally known as Alice's Adventures Underground and Alice Through the Looking Glass , I always preferred the latter as a kid, and still do.

My mother read me all the Winnie The Pooh stories of course, and I went through what most mothers call "the Pooh phase", I had the sheets, the books and the stuffed bear. My sister had a plush Eyore made of corduroy with a detachable tail, which I thought was really cool. My all time favorite Pooh toy was the clear plastic umbrella with all the characters on it. I used to put all my toys in it to spin it around. It broke though, I don't think it liked being a merry-go round.

I also had the Paddington bear books, though not as much paraphernalia.

Other favorite books included from this era included The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats (I believe), a kid's version of Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen which was beautifully illustrated, a set of Cinderella and Rumplestiltskin which were illustrated with photo tableaux of dolls, The Rich Man and the Shoemaker which was a retelling of classic craftsman + elves story and of course, The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss with illustrations by Crockett Johnson, (who also did Harold and the Purple Crayon) I would beg for The Carrot Seed as a bed-time story when my mother was tired, because it had very few words, and very few pages, and was better than no bedtime story at all.

As I got older (think three or four) I got heavily into Doctor Seuss, (big surprise) I was devoted to The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, which in my sophisticated opinion had far more literary merit than the original (remember, I'm three here) because of the multiplying cat trick. As my Seuss fixation grew I discovered such enduring classics as There's a Wocket in My Pocket, Fox in Socks and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish for which I have the unlikely distinction of being one the few people ever to be in a musical Hebrew version. That was in the third grade, and I remember my lines to this day. It's hard to forget rhymed cadences, even in Hebrew. Still, my all-time favorite Seuss books are The Lorax which I hold responsible for all environmentally friendly actions in my later life (Bravo Dr. Seuss!) and The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins, one of the few unrhymed Seuss books.

It wasn't until I hit college that I found out that Dr. Seuss, alias Theodore Geisel initially failed as a writer of adult humor. His The Seven Lady Godivas about a family of naked women whose father is killed by a horse, each of them makes a vow that they won't marry until they have each discovered a truth about horses The results are comical, and I don't really see anything wrong with reading it to children, if you aren't sensitive about nudity. It teaches family loyalty, the virtues of self-education and that waiting for true love can be worth it. Nothing in there to warp young minds.

Another page of children's books

On to the teenage years