He wrote of a childhood filled with evening games in the neighborhood, including "kick the can" and "run, sheepy, run." He loved books, and would walk three times a week to the Chapman branch library in west Salt Lake, where he found a world opened to him beyond his own neighborhood.

Summers were spent with extended family during long vacations at Vivian Park in Provo Canyon, where he slept on a screened porch and took in the sounds of the woods. He learned there a lifelong love of fishing, and with plenty of company to share the time, they hiked, went swimming, played softball, shot arrows and had mud fights. He wrote later that "those were happy years, dream-filled years and are remembered with nostalgia and a few tears."

At other times in the year, he remembered his parents were "busy in bridge clubs and social activities."

As a boy, his home was always cold in the winter, and he would retrieve the morning newspaper and read the headlines — the first phase in a love of newspapering that would continue throughout his life.

During his final year at Grant School, he spent time in the library, looking out the window at the pigeons on the ledge, which started a lifelong interest in raising the birds and would blossom into a teenage hobby.

As a boy, President Monson sometimes spent weekends with extended family members on their farms in Granger. When his parents came on Sunday to retrieve him, they would enjoy a giant freezer of homemade ice cream. Other favorite visits included his aunt's home in Murray and other family members in Bountiful.

His family enjoyed vacations together in California, near Venice and Santa Monica. "We were really a close, though extended, family."

Many Latter-day Saints have heard President Monson tell a Christmas story about his own toy train, and giving a train car to a less-fortunate friend in the neighborhood. Another Christmas story he wrote about involved two rabbits that he gave to a friend who — when asked what his family was having for Christmas dinner — said he didn't know, and had never tasted chicken or turkey.

He later wrote that he shed tears as he put two of his own rabbits in a bag for his friend, "but there was a warm feeling in my heart (later) ... when he told me this was the best Christmas dinner he and his family had ever had."

At age 12, President Monson moved on to Horace Mann Junior High. At the time, his father was general manager of Western Hotel Register Co., a printer of hotel registers, menus and other types of printing. After school, his job was to go by each cafe and pick up a copy of changes for the next day's menu so the new one could be printed at the shop, located at 740 S. Main.