Here are things that have made me excited: The day I found a sand dollar on the beach, all perfect and fragile and white. I was three or four years old and digging in the sand with my little red shovel. I used to love to build sand castles, and I would sit on my yellow-and-white-striped beach blanket and dig, dropping all that sand into my blue pail. Mom and I liked doing the drip technique when we built sand castles, which was to fill paper cups with water and drizzle the water over the castles to make turrets and towers. And this one day, my shovel hit something hard, so I put it down and started using my fingers instead, and I uncovered the sand dollar. I had never seen one before, but somehow I knew it was a rare and special thing. So special that I didn''t even pick it up right away. I just stared down at it resting in the smooth sand.

My heart was beating hard and my mouth went dry and carefully I picked it up and held it, all warm and delicate, in the palm of my hand. On the first day of first grade the teacher, Mrs. Kenney, made us come up to the board one by one and write our names. I sat in my little chair at my little desk, nervous that somehow I would do it wrong. I knew how to write my name. Well, print it in big block letters. TRUDY MIXER. I liked the mountains of the M and the sword swipe of the X and the tricky forked Y .

But I''d never written it in front of so many people, on a blackboard. Poor Gwendolyn Zamborini was standing up there writing her name and it had so many letters and it was taking up so much space that she started to cry and had to sit back down. Doris Fish didn''t know how to write anything except the D , and she made it backward and stomped back to her seat, defiant. Robert Flick cried, too, because he was confused about his name--it was of course Robert, but everybody except Mrs. Kenney called him Bobby, and that was what he knew how to write. Then it was my turn, after so many mistakes and failures. I was wearing a navy-blue jumper with two pockets shaped like gray kitten heads on the front and a navy-blue pucker shirt and red knee socks and brand-new shoes with red laces. And I walked up to that blackboard, holding my breath the entire way.

The chalk felt heavy in my hand when I lifted it to write that T and then the R and then I was writing all of it, not too big and not too small, and excitement rose up in me, I swear I could feel it filling me so much I almost thought it might lift me up like a balloon. Also first grade. We were handed books with a picture on the front of a little girl and a little boy and a spotted dog all looking over a white picket fence. These, Mrs. Kenney told us, were our reading books. The boy was named Dick and the girl was named Jane and the dog was named Spot and the book was called We Look and See . Days and days went by with Mrs. Kenney making us learn the vowels and the sounds the different letters made.

What does this have to do with reading? I thought as I dutifully drew a ladder and put a, e, i, o, u on each rung, dangling y off the top. And then one day, I remember how the trees outside the window were in full autumn splendor, the leaves scarlet and golden and orange, I was staring at We Look and See and somehow I knew-- I knew --that the words said: Look, Jane. Look, Dick. See funny Sally. Funny, funny Sally. I was reading! Reading! I started to shout, "Mrs. Kenney! Mrs. Kenney! I can read!" "Do you want to be my best friend?" Michelle whispered to me during recess one morning in second grade.

Michelle had long blond hair and big blue eyes, and she knew things like all the state birds (Colorado: lark bunting; Ohio: cardinal; Delaware: blue hen chicken) and the names of the presidents in order (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, all the way to our president, John F. Kennedy) and the birthstone for every month (December, zircon, mi≠ June, pearl, hers). I knew things like that, too, but other things, like the astrological signs (Sagittarius, me; Gemini, her) and the state capitals (even the hard ones like Tallahassee, Florida, and Frankfort, Kentucky) and the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (such as the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon). In other words, we were a perfect fit, Michelle and me. We both hated mushrooms-- too slimy! --and put ketchup instead of mustard on our hot dogs and vinegar instead of ketchup on our french fries. We both liked the color purple best and turquoise second best. We were lunar twins, which meant our birthdays were exactly six months apart, and in fourth grade we would both have our golden birthdays, which was when your age--nine--was the same as your birth date--also nine! "Do you want to be my best friend?" Michelle whispered to me that day, and it was like when you put the last piece in a big puzzle and step back and see how perfect it is. "Yes," I whispered back.

And then we were. February 9, 1964. My father and I watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show . Today. I''m on a bus to Providence where I''ll get on another bus to Boston where I''ll take a subway to Suffolk Downs where I''ll see the Beatles. Live. In concert. I press my hand to my pocketbook where the tickets sit waiting and my excitement is so big that it overtakes all of the other most exciting moments of my life combined.

I rest my forehead on the window and watch Rhode Island whizzing past me outside. Every single cell I have is full, like I''m expanding, filling, lifting, floating, flying. Chapter One On February 9, 1964--just two and a half years ago--the British Invasion began. That was the night the Beatles appeared for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show . I had tonsillitis. My tonsils were causing me a lot of trouble that winter, and Doctor Cooper was considering taking them out, an idea I did not like at all. Getting your tonsils out meant going into the hospital and staying at least one night. It meant having ether, a sickeningly sweet-smelling drug that put you to sleep.

This I knew from Rosemary Martindale, who had her tonsils out in second grade. "They put a mask over your nose and mouth and the ether starts pouring out and they tell you to count backward from one hundred and all you want to do is scream and rip that mask off but you can''t because of the ether," she explained to the whole class when she came back to school two weeks later. "Then you wake up with the worst sore throat you''ve ever had because they''ve cut out your tonsils." I ask you: Who would want to do this? My neighbor Theresa Mazzoni, who went to Catholic school, came over that February afternoon. I was lying on the couch eating grape Popsicles and worrying about ether. § § § "Do you know what tonight is?" Theresa asked me. "Sunday?" I croaked, because my throat was too sore for me to talk normally. She rolled her eyes.

"Not just any Sunday, Trudy," she said. "Tonight the Beatles are going to be on The Ed Sullivan Show and your life is going to change forever." She paused. "Everyone in America''s life is going to change forever," she added. I didn''t like how Theresa always knew more than I did. How did she find out this stuff? She was just a kid, like me, but somehow she knew things I didn''t know. One day she said to me, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and I said, "What?" And she said it again, faster and all smug. I didn''t know what she was talking about, but I understood it was important and that in no time everyone else would be saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, too, and if I knew what was good for me I''d learn how to say it, too.

So I asked her, "What are the Beatles?" "Not what, Trudy. Who." Theresa flopped on the chair across from me and raised four fingers. "John, Paul, George, and Ringo," she said, counting each one off. "They''re from England. Liverpool ," she said dreamily. "I like John best," she added. I repeated the names in my head.

John. Paul. George . "Ringo?" I asked. Theresa grinned. "Because he wears lots and lots of rings. He''s the drummer." Ah! So they were a musical group.

Since it was Sunday, I knew that the Beatles were going to be on The Ed Sullivan Show , because that''s where musical groups appeared on Sunday nights. "I''ll come over and watch with you if you want," Theresa said. I did. § § § My parents were skeptical. "The Beatles ?" Mom said, scrunching her face the way she did when something tasted bad. "Why the Beatles ?" "They''re in today''s New York Times ," Dad said, and he laid the newspaper out on the kitchen table. Mom and I looked at the picture Dad was pointing to. In the background was a Pan Am plane and in front of it were four boys with shaggy hair: the Beatles.

The caption said that three thousand fans waiting for them to arrive nearly caused a riot when they stepped off the plane and onto American soil. "They need haircuts," Mom said, scrunching her face even more. Without even hearing one note of a Beatles song, I--like every girl in America--was already 100 percent smitten by them. By the time Theresa showed up to watch The Ed Sullivan Show that night, Dad had read me the entire New York Times article and we''d list.