From a young age, both my sister and I loved to read. I started reading when I was about three years old. My sister started possibly younger. She always met her milestones faster than the rest of us.

I still remember what one of my first reading books was. It was a jumbo-sized Little Critters book that had a number of the stories in one giant book. I can still pretty much remember what the first words were in that book. I read it that many times.

In the very back of my mind, I can remember being called to read it aloud to Mom while she was doing something or other.

Twenty-plus years later, we still have that book. The cover is gone, but it's in pretty good condition besides. I sometimes pick it up and read through it just for the memories.

I started reading novels when I was seven. The first ones I read were Nancy Drew and The Baby Sitters Club. Both were meant for older readers though, so Mom monitored which ones I could read.

Nowadays, most of mine and my sister's conversations center around a book we've read or are reading. When we lived together, we would read funny or amusing parts from a book we had in our hands to each other. Now we copy and paste from Kindle and send it to each other. Sometimes I send parts of my own writing, too.

Having a young child who reads early and is an avid reader is a blessing for most parents, but it also means carefully monitoring the books your children have access to.

My sister was able to read college textbooks by the time she was around four. My parents knew to be careful with what they left around. The housekeeper we got when we returned here from the United States did not.

When my sister was around six, we had a very young housekeeper who was only around eighteen or maybe younger. She found the pregnancy book Mom kept hidden away from us. I suppose her young age made her curious and she flipped through it. But she didn't return it to its hiding place and my sister picked it up and read some of it.

My mother describes what happens next in these words:

You were all home that day. Maybe school was out or maybe we'd already started homeschooling you.

Your father and I came home from somewhere and your sister came up to me, her eyes welling with tears. "Did it hurt?" she asks.

"What?" I ask her.

"When you had me?"

My mother was horrified, needless to say. She made sure to keep a very close eye on that book after that. We still have that book. But it's in worse condition than my Little Critters storybook.

My sister wasn't the only one with a knack of getting her hands on inappropriate reading material. When I was between ten and eleven, I picked up an adult novel that belonged to my mother. She caught me pretty quickly and took it away before I could read too much of it. She also put it on a very high shelf that I couldn't reach.

My parents, and my mother in particular, were always careful about what we read or watched. Sponge Bob Square Pants was a big no-no. I received my Baby Sitters Club books from a magazine subscription at school, and one of those was taken away when it arrived. When I read the back of it for the summary when I was a bit older, apparently it was about the main character having a crush on her teacher. Mom also bought me classics, but one title in particular she wouldn't buy and said it was inappropriate. My sister read it a few years ago and reported she'd found nothing illicit, but I suppose Mom considered the subject matter indecent for a child.

In recent years, I've heard of elementary school girls getting their hands on books like The Fifty Shades of Grey. No words to describe my horror. If you have a young avid reader at home, monitoring is a must. There are much worse things an innocent child can get her hands on than a pregnancy book.