I read my three or four paragraphs to my daughter as we sat together, and she urged me to write a whole book about Winterhouse. On the back of my drawing I started to write a story about a girl who lived with a cruel aunt and uncle but had somehow ended up visiting the fabulous Winterhouse Hotel for Christmas vacation. I pictured a grand hotel set beside an ice-covered lake in some snowy, northern location. Once we settled in, I sketched an enormous hotel in the mountains and called it Winterhouse-I don’t know why I chose that name, but I thought it sounded nice. My daughter suggested we walk to the small lake near our house and bring notebooks with us-she thought it would be fun for both of us to draw pictures and write stories beside the water. Occasionally, I thought about trying my hand at writing a children’s story myself but it wasn’t until one of my daughters encouraged me to do so one spring day when she was eight or nine that I seriously considered making the attempt. When I became a father myself, I enjoyed reading to my children from some of the very same books I’d come to love at their age. Stories such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Phantom Tollbooth, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe were among my favorites when I was young (and remain so today), and I’m glad I’ve never forgotten the enjoyment I discovered in books during my earliest years. I was fortunate to grow up in a home filled with books and to have parents who passed their love of reading and literature on to me.
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