First Book You Can Remember Reading

*on the merits of being punctual. puppy misses out dessert due to tardiness.

** contained the phrase "one dog is enough but two are not too many," which my father would later come to regret.

(And Teddy.)

That was all the kind of thing I'd been reading a couple of years before, so no chance. They made me read out the first couple of pages and answer questions on some of the words before they would let me take it with me. That's why this one stuck in my mind.

It's interesting to see how many of us remember reading 'The Hobbit'. When I was seven and some fraction and was living in a small town called Wawona at the southern border of Yosemite National Park, my father and I set off on a three day hike from the high country back down to our house. Our first night we spent at this ski lodge

http://www.badrascal.com/Yosemite%20December%202001/Ostrander/images/ostrander%20hut_JPG.jpg

albeit in early summer and my father gave me 'The Hobbit' to read by the light of the Coleman lanterns. The next night, we camped in the middle of nowhere in the backcountry and after dinner, my father took one of the cans that had contained part of our dinner and, by melting its base, anchored a candle in it, creating a makeshift candlestick. He said I could read until the candle was burned out. So, there I was surrounded by the soft soughing of the wind through the trees, with the faintly perceptible outlines of the Sierran peaks visible in the moonlight, passionately reading away and looking up occasionally to see how much candle I had left. That candle with that book in that place was one of the best gifts I ever got.

When I was seven, I was too young to read The Hobbit.

I like Richard Scarry.

And which are your favourite volumes?

I recall a Big Rainy Day Colouring Book, I think. Also What Do People Do All Day?

I still have that copy of the book, in two parts, though it's missing the cover.

Books I remember taking out of the library in 1st grade: Pippi Longstocking and The Lonely Doll.

The first book I know with certainty that I read was the Dick and Jane Reader used the beginning reader in my first grade classroom. I was 5 years old and before attending first grade I did not read independently, but was only read to. Soon I was a voracious reader of such gripping tales as One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Go, Dog, Go!, and I, Mouse.