Like so much in my life, my becoming an author of textbooks happened by chance. I was getting an education degree in secondary English when the head of student teaching said to the class, " If you want to make sure you get a job, you will take as many linguistic and reading courses as you can fit into your schedule." I thought he was the smartest and most charismatic teacher I'd ever met--I even remember his name, Frank Manchell--and I followed his advice. But my interest in teaching reading really took root during my first job as a teacher on the locked wards of a psychiatric hospital in a tiny little town called Vinita, Oklahoma. The patients were incredibly varied, ranging from the severely depressed and withdrawn to the wildly delusional. But many of them, when they were lucid and not in a torpor from drugs or terrifying shock treatments, could escape from the really horrific misery of their lives by reading, and it was my job, at least in my mind, to help them do that. My students/patients were interested in any book they could get their hands on, and even those who could barely read were excited about getting better at it. Books broke the monotony, reminded them of what it was like to be outside the hospital walls, and sometimes, believe it or not, made them laugh. I think I got hooked, then and there, on the idea that teaching people to understand and care about books was a great thing to be doing. I still think that, even in the age of the Internet; only now I spend time talking about how best to read hypertext, something that didn't even exist when I sat in a circle with patients on either side of me and wondered at the amazing power of the written word. I still wonder at that, even after all these years, and it's a major reason why I write textbooks. Yes, I like having a job--thank you Dr. Manchell--but I like as well doing something I believe really matters.