Abundant riches
I had the great joy of reading an advance copy of Substitute Groundhog to my students. I hadn’t told them anything about it, so when I began reading, they were caught by surprise to discover I wrote the book. They were delighted when I read the dedication, which is to my own chldren and to my students at Sue Creech Elementary They had so many questions. “Are you rich now? Are you going to write another one? How long did it take you to write it?” One boy yelled out indignantly, ”Why didn’t you tell me before now?!”
At our book fair a few days later, I sold 161 copies, and autographed them all. It was richly satisfying to sign the books, knowing each was going to one of my students or someone in their family. One copy was traveling back with a visiting former student to Australia.
Am I rich now? Financially–no. Yes in seeing my book develop a life of its own. One mom told me her daughter kept my book under her pillow to reread each night with a flashlight. Another mother said she read it to all the siblings in the bleachers at her son’s baseball practice and they loved it. An earnest five year-old told me it was the best book she ever heard. A first grader patted my hand and told me I was famous now. The 29 rejection letters; the many, many rewrites; and the years of persistence have all been worth the fun at the end.
