I had an excellent teacher when I was in the sixth grade, Dennis Reece. He looked just like Steve Landesburg. I still recall very vividly the books he read out loud to us as a class. "Tuck Everlasting" was a favorite, but my all-time fave was "The White Mountains." It had a huge effect on me, firing my imagination in all the best ways.
It has been quite a while since I was an eleven yr old, but I think very often of Mr Reece and the impact he had upon me as a child.