"I had the good fortune to grow up in a house filled with books and book talk," the author stated.
Freedman read voraciously as a youth, diving into any book he could get his hands on. Two of his favorite works were the fiction classic Treasure Island and a popular nonfiction book of the day titled Wild Animals I Have Known. "In those innocent days I didn't worry about distinctions like fiction and nonfiction. I didn't think I knew the difference. I did know that I was thrilled by both of those books. And I knew that both of them were true.... What is important is that I read Wild Animals I Have Known with as much pleasure and satisfaction as I have any novel or story. And I've remembered the book ever since," Freedman related in "Pursuing the Pleasure Principle," in Horn Book.
Freedman's interest in nonfiction books began to jell when he was a child. Another of his favorite books was The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon. "I think it was the first book that gave me a sense of history as a living thing, and it kept me turning the pages as though I were reading a gripping novel," he related in his Newbery Medal Acceptance speech.
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