Neitzel, Shirley

"My earliest memories are of my mother reading aloud. A lot of characters from books were real to me, as our family ritual included bedtime stories for me and chapters from longer books for the older children.

"I wanted to read for myself, so I often lay on the kitchen floor while my mother worked and I 'read' to her from memory. Soon I realized I could tell the story more exactly if I looked carefully at the words on the page. Spelling aloud the words I couldn't figure out, I worked my way through enough stories to satisfy me until our nightly reading session.

"I was...