In the Beginning...

I hope all you parents are making readers out of your children. When I think back to my own childhood, it's full of books. My Dad was a school principal, and nearly every day after work he'd stop in each of our bedrooms and toss two things on our beds: candy and books. We may all have bad teeth, but we love to read. For two of us, that led to a love of writing as well. In my case, that writing started very early.


I'm pulling together pictures to be used in a video presentation at a May event celebrating my twenty years as an author. While doing so, I stumbled across the cover for Witchville (or--ahem--Whitchville), the first book I wrote. What really cracks me up about this book is the synopsis on the flyleaf. Except for the spelling and sentence structure, the plot sounds like it could be from one of my current novels, doesn't it? I may have grown as a writer, but my imagination appears to be stuck in 1961 (as is my typing ability, I'm afraid).

So are you nurturing some excellent readers? Perhaps some future authors? I wonder what form your kids' books will take? Will we be able to hold them in our hands and store them on our bookshelves, or will they all be on Kindle-like devices or on little chips we have implanted in our ears? No matter how anxious I feel about the future of publishing, I have no anxiety whatsoever about the future of storytelling. We'll always need stories, and I hope you're sharing plenty of them with your children.