So Diana Wynne Jones died last week.

And here is something that will surprise a lot of people who know me: I had never read one of her books until about 18 months ago.

I have read everything I could get my hands on since I was 4, but fantasy didn’t make up a big part of my very early reading. I read a  LOT of the classics, because my teacher-mother had them around (Witch of Blackbird Pond, Johnny Tremaine, Black Beauty, Misty of Chincoteague), lots of mythology, a metric ton of  books about animals (I practically memorized a book called BEAR ATTACK! in sixth grade – and let me tell you, it earned that all-caps title and exclamation point). I loved The Hobbit, the Narnia books, and A Wrinkle in Time, but they never made me go searching for more of the same.

We moved to Charlotte when I was almost 12, and the closest library was called Hickory Grove. I started working my way through fiction starting with A, until I got to Watership Down, which upset me so profoundly that I could hardly stand up straight. I couldn’t even GO to that part of the library for a bit, because the whole section was all screaming rabbits and bloody skies. Also, heaven forbid I should read fiction out of order when I had A Plan.

So I wandered over to the carousels filled with paperbacks. Romance was right out, and all the mysteries had boring covers. All the Andre Norton books, though, had goofy but interesting covers, and I jumped on Meredith Ann Pierce’s The Darkangel, which had a picture of a pure white angel on it.

I read every book on that carousel, many of them two or three times. There was a LOT of very bad fiction that I don’t even remember. Also, I was way too young for all that Sheri S. Tepper. She’s a genius, but Beauty broke something inside my head permanently. I still feel a little sick when I think about it.

But I guess Hickory Grove didn’t collect any Diana Wynne Jones. Or maybe they were shelved in the “juvenile” section, which I would not have entered on a bet, because I was An Advanced Reader.

I can ret-con how much her books would’ve meant to me when I was young – or rather, the Young V inside leaps up toward them in gratitude. But Grown V can admire the skill of them in a way that I would not have been able to before. I dole them out to myself in bits, so I can live with each one long enough to see it. And it’s such a pleasure to read every word.