Miniature trains, action figures, board or console games and LEGO. You gave me one (or more) of these during my birthday and you had both my soul and my undying gratitude, of course ,with time being a very contorted concept when you are a kid, by undying i mean the relatively small period of time before i got bored of the gift.

Heaven forbid though that you came along with a book, any book. I still remember an illustrated copy of the Iliad an uncle gave me as a present once, i was so mad and dissapointed that i didn't speak to him for one week (a very long time for a 9 year-old). Yup, as a kid, i absolutely and wholeheartedly hated any printed material except for certain comic books.

15 years can do much to change a person, especially if they involve a timeframe between childhood and adulthood, but i still feel a bit embarassed about hating something that i now adore and love so much. I guess that i have to make two aknowledgments for the change of heart that i've had, with the first one going to my not-so-lenient teacher mrs Murphy, who gave us a 3 month exersise involving the reading of a book of our choice and then putting our thoughts of it to paper, it was quite smart of her to also inform our parents about this..

For the second one i have to go a little more than an aeon back in time and give my thanks to a certain British individual. My picking of his book was an accident, i wasn't planning on it and of course i had never heard of him before. To this day i believe i have read it more than thirty times and not once have i felt it grow old in my head. I think i will continue to do so for a very long time ahead, who knows, maybe i will end up reading it to my grandchildren. It is ,without question, my favourite book of all time.

Thank you, Rudyard Kipling, from the bottom of my heart, for showing a little boy the wonders of the jungle of literature.