Gobblefunking

I was ten when the Big Friendly Giant sauntered into my life, along with James Henry Trotter, Charlie Bucket, Matilda Wormwood, and Danny, the champion of the world. I do not remember the order in which they arrived, but I do remember where I was when they did: Mr. Dickey’s grade 5 classroom.

Hardly precocious, I had long struggled with reading. As much as the world of books fascinated me from the outside, I couldn’t seem to enter it, no matter how much or how often I tried. Discouraged, I would retreat into other imaginative realms: the creek bed where I hunted for fossils and pretended to be Indiana Jones, the abandoned farmhouses and storm cellars I probably shouldn’t have been exploring, the castles and pirate ships I built out of Lego.

By grade 5, I could make my way through such books as Gertrude Chandler...