The very first book I remember reading on my own was James and the Giant Peach, and according to my mother, she read me the first few chapters and I simply took it from there on my own. If a kid reads a book enough that it falls to pieces, he probably loves it, and I loved that book and a great many others completely to death in those years. Even at that age, though, I knew—however distantly—that people wrote books; they didn’t just manifest, like leaves from trees­. Somewhere along the way I got it into my head that I, too, would one day write a book. Not just any old book, either, but something that would give other kids (and maybe some bigger people, too) something else to fall in love with.