The first great inflection point in my life was fifth grade at Hawthorne-Irving School in Oak Park, Illinois.

It was the year I met Miss Edwards and read “Black Beauty.”

In that year I moved from the elementary grades’ wing to the junior high wing and was introduced to Miss Edwards and the school library. As I recall, we were given a couple periods a week (I think mine were right after lunch) to visit the library.

Yes, I know, today five-year-olds have their own electronic readers and are whizz bangs at looking stuff up on the internet. Remember, I’m talking here about when I was a kid, the equivalent of the Dark Ages (the late 40s).

When a new face showed in her library, of course, Miss Edwards always had a suggestion for something to read. I suspect “Black Beauty” was probably her default first choice for ten-year-old boys.

It worked. It got me hooked on reading. I devoured adventure stories. I discovered what I think may have been my father’s set of Edgar Rice Burroughs books – the Tarzan of the Apes stories, the Pellucidar adventures, and the John Carter of Mars novels. As I recall, I completed the entire set in one summer. At that age I couldn’t get enough sci-fi – yes, there was Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, but my favorites then were Clifford D. Simak and Ted Sturgeon.

Of course, at least for me, this deep dive into reading very soon turned into a yearning to write my own stuff. I think I may have been in seventh or eighth grade when I began experimenting with poetry and short stories; there was even an attempt at a screenplay. None of my efforts from that stage survive, which is probably just as well.

But that need to write awakened by Miss Edwards and Black Beauty has never left me.