Do you remember school book fairs? Where you were left to wander an elementary school library with the tables stacked with copies of books whose information could be written on a card and then taken to a grown up for purchase?

At Larchmont Elementary School in Norfolk, Virginia, these events took place after school and with our parents.

Being a precocious little p—k, I passed by most of the tables of books as too far beneath me, but still being a creature of the id (monsters from the id! Forbidden Planet!), I did gravitate towards anything with monsters: dinosaurs, dragons, etc.

This resulted in some flops: especially some Hardy Boy’s book about a dragon (hint: it’s actually a freaking train). I never read the Hardy Boys before nor after that. Not my thing.

I also got Madeleine L’engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet. It had a youngish man riding a winged horse. But I was not ready for it, not in the least because, as it happens, it’s the third in a trilogy, beginning with the fantastic A Wrinkle in Time.

My mother was always very generous about letting me pick out a bunch. I’m not sure what my limit was nor whether it was based on volume of books or combined cost, but I always left with a selection of five or six books. But you didn’t get them right away – they always had to be ordered and were then delivered to the school. And while an adult my describe delaying gratification as delicious suffering, as an eight year old, I found it freaking irritating.