 What's the very first book that changed your life? Forever. This is Anne Lamott and a book that changed my life forever was Pippi Longstockings. I was an early reader and found literal salvation in chapter books. The first one I remember was Pippi Longstockings about this little Swedish girl with braids that stuck straight out, one black sock and one brown sock and a horse that lived with her and a monkey whose name I think was Mr. Nielsen and her father was the king of a cannibal island. He had floated off somewhere. I don't remember if we know what happened to her mother, but she lived alone next to slightly priggish, sweetest girls whose names I think are Tommy and Annika and she radicalizes them. She gets them to do things that are way scarier than I would ever do. She teaches them to go a little farther beyond their garden than they've ever gone before. She makes them laugh. Sometimes she just picks up her horse and carries them out to the front porch for a little fresh air. And when I read that book I saw there's a place in this world for me, for odd, strange, strong me. And I thank the author every few days. We had this one funky little window seat or what we call the window seat which was kind of a very, very small space jammed up against the window and that was my safety spot. That was if I was there and if you were reading you could get away with it. You know if you were sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out all of life because you'd just been hanging out with like Catholics or some other strange family a grown-up would come along and say, don't you have something to do? Don't you have homework or is your room clean? But if you had a book in your hands they'd come by and smile at you. And I remember the cover. I remember those braids and those freckles and that goofy skirt and that one long black knee suck and one long brown knee suck. She was always making pancakes and flipping them and some and they got stuck on the ceiling all the time. She was like Ruth Gordon and Harold and Maude, you know and Harold and Maude was a movie that changed my life forever, forever. I had this kinky short nappy whitish blonde hair so I couldn't do the braids and other girls would do the braids for Halloween. They put wire in their braids so of course I was completely bitter and jealous about that. But you know we didn't have enough money ever and so sometimes my socks would kind of not match. They'd be the same color but they wouldn't be from the same pair. One does what one can. We all loved Pippi Longstocking but maybe not quite as much as Anne Lamotte. Bookmarks are brought to you by to the best of our knowledge. I'm Ann Strainchamps and if there's a book that left a mark on you tell us about it at ttbook.org slash bookmarks.