From: Linda Leopold Strauss <strauss>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:42:06 -0400

Wonderful discussion -- thank you, everyone! And one more librarian story. I learned to read when I was 3 or 4 (family stories vary), so my parents took me to our local library (in Melrose Park, PA) for a library card. At first, the librarian wouldn't give me one because I wasn't in school; that, she said, was the rule. When my mother explained that I could already read, the librarian made made me take a test, which involved reading the rules of the library. I was so little that my parents sat me up on the checkout counter for the test-- I still remember that. And evidently I passed, because I got my card. At that particular library, you could take out one book at a time if you were in first grade, two if you were in second, etc. But from that time on "my" librarian let me take out as many books as I wanted. And I took them out by the armload, then went on to write them!
  Linda Leopold Strauss
  THE PRINCESS GOWN, Houghton-Mifflin, September 1, 2008
Received on Thu 31 Jul 2008 04:42:06 PM CDT