Ms. Lee, now 80, has published virtually nothing of significance since then except a 1983 book review. But now she has written something for publication. It is a letter for O, the Oprah Winfrey magazine, about how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town, The Associated Press reported.

In the magazine's July "special summer reading issue," Ms. Lee recalls becoming a reader before she entered first grade. Older sisters and a brother read to her; her mother read her a story a day; her father read her newspaper articles. "Then, of course, it was Uncle Wiggily at bedtime," Ms. Lee writes of the popular old-time children's character, right.

She notes that books were scarce in the 1930's in the town, Monroeville, where she still lives part time; and the scarcity of books in a town without movies and parks made them a special treasure. "Now," she writes, "75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."