I learned how to read at the age of four and after that I read everything in the house, including milk cartons at the breakfast table. The first book that really hooked me was the Jungle Book (text only) by Rudyard Kipling. We were visiting my oldest cousin and her husband, and they had it in the bookshelf. I hardly managed to leave the book there, and to my pleasant surprise Santa brought me a copy the following Christmas. I'm not sure if I had even started school back then. Anyway I must have been quite young, since my little sister smudged some pages with a crayon as a revenge for my colouring a couple of pictures in her colouring book. I still have the book and a few of years ago I read it out to my daughters as a bedtime story, some thirty pages at a time, breaking the story in an intriguing situation.
