Two posts in one day!!
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been going through stuff in our house and getting rid of some things and re-boxing/reorganizing other things. During this process, I’ve discovered quite a few things from my past that I had forgotten we had. It was a trip going through some of my elementary school papers. I was quite the little school nerd.
One thing I found was a book that I got when I was in elementary school. My school had flooded (for some reason that I can’t remember) and we had to transfer to another school for about a week or so. That was 20 years ago, but I’m pretty sure that that was when this happened. While we were there, they had a couple of cool visitors. One was Jim Davis, who taught us how to draw Garfield. The other was the author of a children’s book called “The Cat’s Purr.” His name is Ashley Bryan. I just looked him up on Wikipedia and apparently “[i]n 1962, he was the first African American to publish a children’s book as an author and illustrator.”
Most everyone that knows me or that has been reading this blog for a while knows just how much of a book fanatic (a/k/a freak) I am. My mom always jokes that I was born reading, but I’ve always loved books. I believe meeting this author was one of the coolest experiences of my childhood. It made authors real. It showed me where books come from. It made me realize that you can meet famous people (other than Donald Duck). The rest, as they say, is history.
Now, if you’re wondering about the Donald Duck comment from above, this should explain it:
And yup, that’s my friend Lisa in my arms that I found when going through my storage unit a couple of months ago:
That is so cool! I don’t have a single thing from my childhood. My mother wasn’t sentimental about anything and threw every single thing of mine in the trash. Don’t get me wrong, she was a great mom, just not into stuff. Funny, I’m like that too. I also throw stuff away, makes my husband crazy.
Glad you still have this though. Looks like a collector’s item, not to mention a wonderful memory.
Not a single thing, Diana?! Wow! This is one of the few ways we differ, I think. I am a total packrat and I think I get that from my mom. I get sentimental about the silliest things!
Hmmm Donald Duck doesn’t seem to change over the years!!!!
Ron’s last blog post..TGIF