Author Kate DiCamillo tells a childhood story of her teacher reading aloud, when she was in second grade.  It is powerful.  She remembers every detail… including the class bully.

“It’s 1972, and I’m 8 years old and in second grade at Clermont Elementary in Clermont, Florida.

The classroom floors are wood, and there’s a ticking clock on the wall, and there’s a chalkboard, and there are mottoes to live by strung up above it. And the teacher, Ms. Boyette, is wearing cat eyeglasses with glinting rhinestones.

She’s reading aloud to us from “Island of the Blue Dolphins.” And we have just come to a part of the book where the main character tames a wild dog, a wild dog. And I’m literally on the edge of my seat. I’m listening, listening, caught up in the wonder of at all. I’m a kid who loves a story.

But also in that…