An abridged picture-book version of The Wizard of Oz is the earliest memory I have of actually reading a book by myself. I must have been seven or eight years old, and the very fact of me reading made it quite special to me. I
took the book everywhere I went, even into the bathtub (the covers were laminated), and gradually as I grew older it lead to my reading the full-text edition and all that followed. 

In 1955 I even wrote my own Oz story, at the age of eleven, and contacted Reilly & Lee to see if they might want to publish it. Not knowing how to respond, they sent my letter on to Jack Snow who also resided in New York, and Jack wrote to me. My parents and I visited him several times, taking him as our guest to the 1956 re-release of the 1939 MGM film and also to the Frank Baum Centenary exhibition at Columbia University Libraries. We bonded in friendship from a mutual affection for Oz, and his death later that summer was difficult for me.