Every winter of my childhood, usually in February, I had bronchitis. At some point during the week or two that I spent in bed, my father would arrive home with a book for me. This was how I built my own small library. Heidi and The Secret Garden I read and reread until I had all but memorized them. The one inspired me to try my own garden, digging with a spoon in the rockhard soil at the side of the apartment building and planting pansies I’d bought from the small nursery at the corner of Yonge St. and Eglinton. The Alms Uncle’s hut, I was convinced, was the small brown house at the top of the hill where Manor Road turned to run down to Mt. Pleasant Rd. I never tested my hypothesis by knocking on the door, but I did once convince my mother to let me drink my milk from a bowl the way Heidi did.

     My father also gave me Water Babies, which confused me, and Pinocchio, which gave me nightmares, much as Hansel and Gretel had done. I also had on my shelf Peter Pan, The Five Little Peppers and How they Grew and every Bobbsey Twins book I could get my hands on. Now that the war was over and paper was no longer reserved for the war effort, classic titles were appearing