| When I was about three or four, I dreamed I could read. It was a recurring dream: turning page after page and reading all the words. But when I woke up, I could no longer read. Finally, in the first grade, in spite of the infamous red, blue and yellow Dick and Jane readers, I learned to read! Books were a part of life in my family. My parents read bedtime stories to me and my brother every night. The table by my father's red armchair always held a stack of books with torn paper markers in various places. He read history, economics, novels, paperback mysteries with thrilling, lurid covers. He also read Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Pogo comic books which he bought as soon as they hit the newsstand and which he allowed us to read only after he was finished. My brother and I were given books on birthdays, at Christmas, when we were sick . . . I saved them all, eventually shelved them alphabetically, catalogued them, loaned them to my friends and charged fines when they were overdue. Much of my early childhood was spent slouched in an armchair or up in a tree house with my nose in a book . . . A good early education for a writer! My parents didn't buy a television until I was eleven or twelve. We were allowed to watch an hour and a half a week, so we selected our shows carefully. I discovered, thanks to my father's enthusiasms: Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, the Marx brothers, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, and British films, like the Lavender Hill Mob - all wonderful slapstick humor. In retrospect, I'm sure these shows have had some influence on my picture books. | |
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