I often find that once a child unlocks the secret of words, they hunger for them. There is a kind of magic in reading. It takes the mind to places where the body may not go, allowing one to forget, for a while, life's troubles.

Monsters were real. They wore human flesh and looked out from behind the eyes of seemingly benign people. You passed them on the street every day, never knowing they'd marked you as prey until it was too late.