Special Gift
Garnett, Mary Anne

MARY ANNE: I think I was very lucky in that my parents read to me when I was a young child and books were a special gift. Some of my earliest memories are of the little golden books, I think they still exist. I think maybe they have reissued them. Stories like "Mickey Mouse's Picnic" and my parents would read them to me and they would read them to me that my parents tell me that there were parts that I memorized. Like there was a list of the things that they took to the picnic and they would deliberately try to skip something on the list of things that they took to the picnic and I would correct them on that. So that's really my favorite memories, that and on Sundays my dad would read the comics to me; not all the comics, the comics that were child-friendly. And then also when my grandmother lived not too far away from us and my mother would go over and visit her and when I got a little bit older they would give me a nickel and finally it went up to a dime to buy comic books. And so I would go over to the drugstore and they had a rack and I would just look through all the comic books and read them [Laughing] and then eventually buy one and take them home. So I was very fortunate in having parents and grandparents that encouraged that and I still have some of the books that were given to me by my paternal grandmother, books of fairy tales and things. I also remember when I started losing my baby teeth, I'd be reading a book and you know you kind of wiggle that tooth to come out a little bit so I'd be reading a book when a tooth was coming out and I remember reading "Wind in the Willows" when I lost one of my teeth. So those are my very happy memories of learning how to read - not reading serious literature but children's cartoons and I've just kept on doing it all my life.