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I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. The three things that they focused on were reading, writing, and arithmetic. My goodness, this is a novel idea in this modern society. I was really good at all three of these things. I was particularly good at math.

Grades were important in our house. I was reading by two. My mom would sit there and read with me, read with me, read with me. It was wonderful.

It was then, I think, that I discovered that the best way of bringing a medieval subject home to my generation was not to be medieval in its treatment.

I was fortunate to grow up in a middle-class home with two hardworking parents who enjoyed both reading and mathematics.

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.

Teaching in the upper elementary grades had given me a deep appreciation of the gifts and graces that are specific to individuals with ten or eleven years of experience as human beings. It is, I think, a magical time - when so much has been learned, but not yet enough to entirely extinguish the magical reach and freedom of early childhood.

Medieval learning was really advanced.

My parents were determined to move into the middle class.

I was a paper boy, beginning the summer between my fourth-grade and fifth-grade years.

I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.