I reached in for another book—a beat-up copy of Farley Mowat

I reached in for another book—a beat-up copy of Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf I'd been carrying around from place to place for as long as I could remember.I was about to put it on the shelf,when I stopped.Never Cry Wolf was the first genuinely adult nature book I'd read.For years,as a young kid,it had sat on my shelf unopened.Too long.Too hard.No pictures—if you didn't count that small woodcut of a wolf on the front cover.Then one day in fourth grade,bored and with nothing else to do,I had picked it up and started reading.It was good.Really good.Before I knew it,I was halfway through.When I got to the last page of the book,I was a different person from the one who had started it.