A Meme

I have a lot I want to write about, and I still need to finish those things you may not know about me, but I'm discovering a few great memes that have been going around, so I've decided to do one of them today. Thank you to the person who created this fun one.

1. How old were you when you learned to read, and who taught you? I was an extremely boring child -- and have been a late bloomer all my life -- who was in first grade when I learned how to read. Thus, my first grade teacher, a man who made Hitler look like a gentle little bunny rabbit, taught me. I figure this is a testament to how eager I was to learn to read, because it’s amazing I managed to learn anything living in terror as I did.
2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what was the first one you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles you borrowed from the library? This is like asking me if I owned any underwear when I was a child. However, there’s one book I checked out of the library over and over again, which, for some odd reason, I never actually owned: Corduroy by Don Freeman.
3. What is the first book you bought with your own money? I don’t know. I do know that the most exciting thing on the planet was waiting for and receiving those brown packages from Scholastic Books, a most-wonderful experience, still probably better even than things like receiving my first kiss or getting my first promotion that’s replicated today by boxes from Amazon and Powells.
4. Were you a re-reader as a child? If so, which book did you re-read most often? Absolutely. I re-read everything (ahhh, those glorious days when I hadn’t a clue there was so little time to read all the books in the world). I probably read The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright most often.
5. What's the first adult book that captured your interest, and how old were you when you read it? Lots of adult books captured my interest before this, but the one that really truly moved me away from children’s and young adult’s literature and into the world of contemporary adult literature was The World According to Garp by John Irving.
6. Are there children's books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? I can’t think of any. I’ve discovered lots of children’s books I love (like those by Alan Garner) that I didn’t know existed as a child, but I’m pretty sure I would have loved them then as well. As an adult, with the exception of authors who didn’t exist when I was a child like J.K. Rowling and Lemony Snicket, I’ve tended to re-read childhood favorites when I read children’s literature.