Reading is FUNdamental. Also, the TV was broken.

  Here’s my mother reading to my sister Evelyn, who is obviously not paying attention. These days, Evelyn routinely beats me at Scrabble, so I guess some of it penetrated her tiny brain.

  I think being read to helped me get a jump on things scholastic. When I started school, I was immediately able to understand the subtext in the Curious George books.

  Remember the one where he gets a paper route but decides to make boats instead of delivering the newspapers? Being a wise monkey, he knew that the Internet would develop, and so he was trying to develop new markets for the newspaper.

  (Maybe I should have cropped this more, but I had to get that awesome lamp in the picture.)