Gratuitous Book Meme-age - A La Recherche Division

1. How old were you when you learned to read and who taught you? I remember my kindergarten class being divided into three reading groups: the red birds, the blue birds and the yellow birds, the reds being the most advanced and the yellows the least. (Can you believe it? Segregating classmates based on relative merit? Eek! Of course, this was about 1971 or so.) Anyhoo, I was a red bird. And I still remember reading Dick & Jane stories that year. (By contrast, both the older Llama-ettes are reading ahead of where I was at their ages. My first grader is blazing her way through Junie B. Jones, while my third grader is devouring Harry Potter.)

2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what’s the first one that you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles that you borrowed from the library? Yes, lots. I would come home with those catalogs from Scholastic Books and my parents would essentially allow me to pick out anything I wanted. I recall that each order we placed usually was for between 15 and 20 books. God only knows what the first title was.

3. What’s the first book that you bought with your own money? I honestly don't remember. I really never got an allowance, so I wasn't flush with pocket money. On the other hand, continuing the pattern above, the 'rents never stinted on purchasing books that I requested. I suppose it wasn't until I got a job in high school that I could be said to have paid for my own. (Oddly enough, I can definitely remember the first musical recording I ever bought with my own coin: It was a cassette of the four Mozart Horn Concerti.)

4. Were you a re-reader as a child? If so, which book did you re-read most often? Ha! The boy is the father of the man. I've always re-read favorites. Three that come to mind from childhood are Rascal by Sterling North, the American Junior Heritage's Carrier War In The Pacific and Sid Fleischman's By The Great Horn Spoon. I had all of these more or less memorized.

5. What’s the first adult book that captured your interest and how old were you when you read it? Hmmmm.....tough one. In middle school, I remember a friend got hold of this wrestling magazine with pictures of these two women...what? Oh? Well, never mind. No, I really don't remember.

6. Are there children’s books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? Which ones? Quite a few. Mater has never been fond of what she calls "Little Green Men" fiction, so I never read either The Hobbit or the Chronicles of Narnia until much later in life.

"Tag" for them's as want to be.

Yips! to Terry Teachout.