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didn't like the idea. She said I waited a long time to get that thing signed and I would really regret selling it. Mom said that when I had kids, they'd be mad I sold it because it'll be worth a lot of money. Well, that settled it for me. I've already decided I'm not HAVING any kids. I want to be a bachelor like my Uncle Charlie, who spends all his money on vacations and heated toilet seats and stuff like that, instead of forking it over to a bunch of ungrateful kids.

I can thank my librarian, Mrs. Schneiderman, for getting me into the "Tower of Druids" series to begin with, because she's the one who started the graphic novel section in our school library. I don't know when they started calling comic books graphic novels, but I'm glad they did. Some of the teachers complain that they don't count as REAL reading, but the way I see it, if they're in the library, they're fair game for book reports.

Unfortunately, when Mrs. Schneiderman put in the graphic novels, she got rid of the Easy Reader section. I always used the books in the Easy Reader section to do my reports for Social Studies, because you could whip through one of them in about forty- five seconds.

When I was little I used to want to be an author myself. But whenever I started telling Mom my ideas, she'd say my story was just like some book that was already published. I realized all the good ideas were taken before I was even born. Mom said if I wanted to be an author, I should try coming up with something original. But it was really hard coming up with a fresh idea, so I just took one of my favorite books and more or less copied it word

for word with a few small tweaks. When Mom read what I wrote, she was really impressed, and I guess she thought I was some kind of genius or something. But I think Mom got a little carried away. She sent my book to a publisher in New York, who told her I'd plagiarized "Geoffrey the Gorilla," which was already a bestselling kids' book. Mom was pretty mad at me for passing off the book as my own, but I'm surprised she couldn't figure it out herself from reading it.

Dinosaur swings from vine to vine. He perches in a tree and pounds his chest. Thursday Well, it turns out my first-edition copy of "Tower of Druids" is totally worthless. I brought it to the comic book shop yesterday afternoon hoping to cash in, but the guy who works there told me the autograph was a forgery.