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The book that made me a reader
At the edge of a Jurassic forest of ferns and palms, a fierce tyrannosaurus rex roars defiantly as a dark volcano explodes, spewing a tall fountain of lava that reddens the smoke-choked, hellish sky. Overhead, a trio of pteranodons soar serenely away from the blast. In the background, three desperate pachycephalosauri hurry furtively across a meadow, threading the needle between a volcanic apocalypse and an apex predator.
At the age of five, I gaped — transfixed — at the glorious cover of Rand McNally’s Album of Dinosaurs, resplendent on a store shelf.
Forgetting how poor we were, I begged my mom to buy it for me. As a single mother raising five children, she had to say no. I cried inconsolably.
An unfillable Album of Dinosaurs-sized void dominated the next several months of my life. Our family owned few books, but Mom took us to the library every week, so there were always plenty of borrowed tomes in our single-wide trailer. Tragically, however, the Federal Way Public Library did not stock Album of Dinosaurs, and the dinosaur books they did carry paled by comparison. Even my favorite Saturday morning TV show— the first inspiration for my dinosaur obsession—now offered scant consolation (though I continued to treasure my Land of the Lost lunch box and thermos).
