“And we sat there on the floor, my brother and I, and I heard her read the wonderful story about the giant ‘Bam-Bam’ and the fairy ‘Viribunda’. Yes, I could have died right there on the spot! It was in that moment that my love of reading was born. With the impatience of a four-year-old I stared at the strange, black curlicues that Edit was able to interpret but not me, and that through some strange magic suddenly could fill the entire kitchen with fairies and giants and witches.”

There was a cottage at Näs where Sven, who took care of the Ericsson family’s cows and other animals, lived with his wife Kristin and their daughter Edit. Astrid and Gunnar loved playing at the slightly older Edit’s house. She had her own room in the attic with the most incredibly exciting things. There were dolls, bookmarks, little boxes with pearls and a few storybooks.

In Kristin’s modest kitchen there was a wooden sofa, a table, a couple of chairs and a wood-burning stove. It was in this kitchen, one day as the rain pounded against the windows, that Edit read four-year-old Astrid her very first story. When Edit read about the giant ‘Bam-Bam’ and the fairy ‘Viribunda’ the kitchen suddenly transformed into a magical place. “It set my little soul rocking and it has never really stopped.”

The kitchen became forever important. Astrid later recounted how almost all kitchens described in her books are actually based on Kristin’s kitchen.

The siblings at Näs read everything they could get their hands on. The books remained a constant source of inspiration for their games. Sometimes they made up songs about the books. Once when Astrid was trying to get her little sister Ingegerd off to sleep she simply sang from the book she was currently reading.

Astrid describes herself how it felt to read as a child: “It was something that engaged your entire being, all your senses, sight, smell and touch, more intense than any other event in your whole existence as a child.”  A new book was “something almost unbearably wonderful”.

It was at Christmas that the children received new books; otherwise they were borrowed off friends or at the school library. Astrid attests to an almost insatiable hunger for reading, where anything she could get a hold of - be it Anne of Green Gables or Tom Sawyer, to the adventurous tales of The Man with Fists of Steel and the King of the Champions - was read with equal wonder and benefit.

Several of the books that Astrid read as a child continued to be favourites throughout her life. They were later read aloud to both her children and grandchildren, who by Astrid’s voice experienced the stories’ magic. These included, for example, Treasure Island, A Little Princess and Daddy-Long-Legs.