April is National Library Month which brings to mind my very first visit to the library. I must have been around five years old at the time. My mother had heard about story time and brought me to the Yakima, WA library.

It was a huge building constructed of stone; one that Andrew Carnegie had built. Even then I had a creative imagination because I saw myself as a princess walking into a castle.

My mother said that when the librarian handed me a book, I immediately pressed it against my heart and clung to it. From that point forward to this very day I take a book with me every night to bed. The wonderful part of that story is that the librarian who handed me my first book was Beverly Cleary.