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"All your friends are outside." It was true; they always were. Sometimes I went out with them, coaxed into the street, out into the fields, down by the creek, by the lure of what I knew instinctively was normal childhood.
“你的朋友都在外面呢。”我知道，的確如此。他們的確總在外面。我有時受他們的誘惑和他們一起上街，到田野里、小河邊去。我知道這種誘惑對一孩子而言是正常的。
I have clear memories of that sort of life, of lifting the rocks in the creek that trickled through Naylor's Run to search for crayfish, of laying pennies on the tracks of the trolley and running to fetch them, flattened，when the trolley had passed. But the best part of me was always at home, within some book that had been laid flat on the table to mark my place, its imaginary people waiting for me to return and bring them to life.
我清楚地記得那樣的日子，在內勒河那條潺潺的小溪里搬起石頭，尋找躲在下面的小龍蝦；在電車軌道上放上小硬帀，等電車開過，再跑去把壓成片的硬幣取回來。但我的心總還是在家里，在某本書里，書攤在桌上，那是我留下的標記。書里那些想象中的人物都在等我回去將他們喚醒。
In the years since those days in that club chair I have learned that I was not alone in this, although at the time I surely was, the only child I knew, or my parents knew, or my friends knew, who preferred reading to playing. In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself. I learned the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books, a kind of parallel universe in which I might be a newcomer but was never really a stranger. My real, true world. My perfect island.
躺在那張椅子里看書的日子已經過去多年了，這些年來我發現，這么做的不只我一個人。盡管在那個時候，就我所知，就我父母和我的朋友所知，我是唯一一個對讀書比對玩更著迷的孩子。在書本中，我不僅游歷其他世界，也探索自己的世界。我了解了自己，明白了自己想成為什么樣的人，發現了自己心中的愿望，敢于對自己以及所處的世界進行種種幻想。我學會分辨善惡是非。每天睡覺、起床，除此之外，就是讀書。這些書，就像一個平行存在的宇宙，在這里，我也許是個新人，但絕不是個陌生人。這些書對我來說，是真正的、真實的世界，是完美的小島。
