Early Reading

What are some of the first things you can remember reading on your own?

Born as I was before the start of the Dr. Seuss classics like The Cat in the Hat, the first things I recall reading were from a set of books my mother had, with short stories and things for children, divided up into volumes aimed at specific age groups. It was there I encountered some of A.A. Milne's poems, and Dr. Seuss's marvelous "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins."

We made monthly trips to the library by the time I was grade school. There I discovered the Dr. Dolittle books by Hugh Lofting and the Freddy the Pig novels by Walter R. Brooks. In the school library, I came across the first science-fiction novel I can recall reading: The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree, by Louis Slobodkin.

From then, I found the SF section in the public library--first in the children's section and when I had devoured everything there, the librarian gave me permission (although I was under age) to venture into the adult section. A life-long love had begun.