What was your favorite picture book as a child? Mine was a book published in 1975 that I doubt many are familiar with: Ultra-Violet Catastrophe: Or, the Unexpected Walk with Great-Uncle Magnus Pringle (Margaret Mahy/Brian Froud). I treasured it and pored over it again and again. I identified with the main character, Sally, who spent her days in trees as Horrible Stumper the tree pirate. I also spent my days in trees, particularly the maple in our front yard, talking to tree gnomes and sending maple seeds down to the ground, miniature-magical helicopters. I loved the story of irreverent Sally having adventures with her equally irreverent Great-Uncle Magnus Pringle, despite prim Aunt Anne Pringle’s wishes. I loved the luminous watercolor artwork and the depiction of Sally with ever-disheveled hair and scratched up knees.

I researched this book a little bit to discover that the illustrator, Brian Froud, is none other than illustrator for another favorite book, Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book. This book was given to me by a friend at the first publishing house I worked, and where I first learned that you could have a whole career making kid’s books—my first love. This book is special to me because it marks that place in time. My love of fairies grew out of my love of gnomes, first introduced to me by way of a book from my step-father, the classic tome simply titled: Gnomes (Wil Huygen/Rien Pootvliet). The inscription reads: To Aimee with Love on your 9th Birthday, Oct 30, 1979. I remember opening this gift, just home form girl scouts and still in my little green uniform. Being a school night, the birthday celebration was small—just my parents and me and a simple, from-scratch German chocolate cake. But the book had such an impact on me that I can recall even these tiniest of details. I lived with this book for years, studying every bit of it, memorizing everything there ever was to know about gnomes. I loved how the text looked handwritten. I loved the washy watercolor artwork. I started looking at the world with a microscopic eye, trained at ground level. I looked for gnomes in every small outdoor space. I built tiny little furniture for them with twigs and acorn shells and robin feathers. My book still sits on my bookshelf today, the jacket yellowed with age but otherwise in pristine condition, for even though I’ve probably paged through it hundreds of times, I took absolute care with it.

I can’t find my copy of Ultra-Violet Catastrophe, nor do I know how it came to me as a child, but I still remember it vividly. Once in awhile my now seven-year-old son will briefly attach to a book in that way, but I don’t think he’s found the book yet. Once in a beautiful while I’ll watch him studying the pictures in a book intently by himself, then requesting it at bedtime several nights in a row. He’ll always pause on one page in particular and study it. I don’t ask what he’s thinking, I just watch him and I know—that feeling of complete immersion, of escaping into a character, into a scene, into a story.

I’m still discovering new favorite picture books every day, and I still look for gnomes and fairies, now while tending my own flower gardens. What was your favorite book as a child?