As an avid reader, my library card is extremely handy in preventing the house from being completely overrun by piles of books I have picked up and refuse to be rid of. Pictured is one of the earliest books I've collected that I'm fairly certain was mine from the beginning, rather than a hand-me-down or second hand purchase (I have a ton of paper backs like James Bond novels from the 60's in that category). This one is copyright 1958, 1960; second printing 1962, so it coincides with Miss Barlow's report card.
I remember graduating from a Children's card to an Adult card at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, so I could take out up to 10 books at a time, rather than the limit of 3 or so I had earlier. Plus I could borrow from any section other than reference, not just the children's section. Moreover, I could visit any library in the city and return it locally. Awesome to a walker.
While I don't remember this directly, my Mom tells the story that when I moved up from kindergarten to first grade, I came home upset at the end of my first day. When asked what was wrong, I supposedly told her I was not able to read yet. I had been promised I would learn to read in the first grade, and it just didn't happen! Of course, this was a time when kindergarten wasn't as structured and pushy as now.
The Giant Golden Book of Mathematics has well-illustrated short stories about a wide range of physical, numerical and spatial concepts, and is well beyond the dry boring tone of most text books. It turns out the author was a social activist as well (see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Adler). I'm still using what I learned from that book to this day, as I often run computer benchmark programs to generate prime numbers with techniques illustrated as The Sieve of Eratosthenes and explained in the section Numbers We Cannot Split.
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