Who is your book woman?

My mom and I went on a shopping expedition today. We started at Borders because I was dead-set on getting a better, more in-depth study Bible than my Zondervan, another devotional/reading guide (that was more reading guide less self help book and went more into the historical and linguistic context...which I didn't find, because apparently the reading public is more concerned with gaining their Best Life Now *shudder* than truly understanding biblical texts, but I digress), and a book called Curly Girl, which is a guide to the care and cutting of curly hair (really a good reference, btw, but that's for another post).
My problem is, whenever I go to a book store, for whatever purpose, I always end up in the children's book section. Always. I LOVE children's literature (though I am ashamed to say that my much loved Borders has become more of a half-toy-infested-half-literature take on children's sections), and I especially love books that are different and surprising (Ricky Gervais, for example, just wrote a pop up book of such hilarity that I am thinking of getting myself a copy just for when I need a laugh). So when I turned and saw "That Book Woman" by Heather Henson and illustrated by David Small, I knew I needed to give it a look. The cover was intriguing as the title.
The book basically tells the story of the Pack Horse Librarians hired to bring books up into the Appalachian Mountains (a program founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, relative to my favorite president, Theodore Roosevelt). It also tells the story of developing the love of reading. It was so moving that I actually cried, right there in the bookstore. I was so embarrassed I slammed the book shut and carried it with me to another part of the store so I could be alone.

I thought about it and I don't know that I had a book woman. I had trouble reading, more really because I didn't like the material I was assigned ("But WHY is Jill rid of Tim? What did he do? Why is the rat on the mat? The book says the dog is sad but the picture has him smiling! What is going on? This is a dumb book!") and though I learned to read in Kindergarden (when my classmates learned in Preschool), I don't remember devouring books whole until the second grade, and that was quite by accident. I was in after school care at a large daycare facility. So large, in fact, that I often felt overwhelmed with all the children there and I was quite isolated (except for one ne'er-do-well who taught me to spit on people who took your swing, which got me beaten up the only time in my life-by a boyscout). One day I was very bored and I went up into the loft to check the book shelves. I found one of the Babysitters' Club books, "The Ghost at Dawn's House", by Ann M. Martin. I am not a scary story reader. It kept me up LATE and my parents had to come in and tell me to turn off the lights, that it was just a book (and not an incredibly scary one at that), and I would be fine. I was hooked. I proceded to read almost every BSC book, The Saddle Club books, random children's books we ordered through the Scholastic Book Club (back when they, too, sold more books than toys, hmph), any other series I could find about horses, The Sleepover Club, and a Christian series called The Twelve Candles. I read "Just As Long as We're Together" by THE GREAT Judy Blume, I read a somewhat children's version of the Ramayana, I was teased because I would rather read at recess than run around and play with the other children (well, I really assumed they didn't want me to play), and I kept going.
When I really look at it though, my father was always ready to buy another book, be it from Half Price Books or Barnes and Nobel, because he wanted me to read. And he didn't limit my selection by quality. Never pointed out that Babysitter's Club didn't exactly have much literary merit. I think one time I was reading a series that depressed me a LOT and he suggested I stop reading them, but otherwise I was FREE to choose whatever I wanted, free to explore the worlds. So, in a big way, I guess my father was my "book woman."
Who was yours?