PROLOGUE

My most successful story was my first. In year two, my teacher asked us to write a book for the class library. Mine was part Choose Your Own Adventure, part anti-drug Public Service Announcement. I titled it Marijuana Mountain. It was (still is) completely incoherent, but the story was a hit with second graders.

Ten years after its “first printing” my mom received a call from my second-grade teacher Mrs. Herzog. She pleaded with her to take the book. “Every week, I ask my students what I should read, and it’s always, ALWAYS, Marijuana Mountain. I just can’t read it anymore.”