When I was growing up in the 1950s, sweaters were a huge thing.

The protests against Harry Potter follow a tradition that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.

I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.

When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.

Marriage is the most obvious public practice about which information is readily available. When combined with the traditional Jewish concern for continuity and self-preservation - itself only intensified by the memory of the Holocaust - marriage becomes the sine qua non of social membership in the modern Orthodox community.

My aunts told wonderful stories. Not to me, but to each other. We had a very strong family. My mother's sisters loved each other intensely. The uncles loved each other intensely.

I'm enjoying my years, I'm enjoying my life, I'm enjoying my family. I'm just happy - a happy person.

All my life I thank God. My family was very religious.