Flashback to another children's book
/You may be asking yourself, “How on earth is Dale, who was the director of the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program, the author of an influential book, and also a composer and other stuff — how on earth is he able to create a universally-beloved, award-winning** children’s series like the BugVerse Chronicles?”
Ah, you see, you’re forgetting that I spent a third of my career checking out books to kindergartners, and even before I moved from a high school media center to Newnan Crossing Elementary I was a huge connoisseur of children’s books. (When our son was born, I already had a couple of shelves of books ready for his perusal.)
My favorite children’s books offer a sense of wonder, of magic, and of delight, and that’s what I’ve aimed for in anything I’ve written for them.
The page in A Bug’s Dream where Bug turns difference colors reminded me of the time when the kindergarten teachers asked me to do a lesson on COLORS and I came up with my own oversize book, Sam Cat’s Colors. I painted it with acrylic on canvas blanks, 18”x24” as I recall.
You will notice as you read it — it’s only thirteen pages/sentences — that the audience of little people is invited to guess what color Sam is going to be on the next page. (You may also notice that the book reinforces the clichéd exemplars of those colors, but hey, that’s part of the lesson too, right?) (You may also also notice the sly vocabulary lesson: with each delighted exclamation, Sam Cat teaches the kids a different way to say “Cool!”)
And here we have Sam Cat himself, the magnificent Maine coon who graced us with his presence for quite a while.
Sam supervises the construction of the labyrinth, 2008-ish
Some time after I retired, I wondered if the media center still had Sam Cat’s Colors. I made some discreet inquiries and it appears that it has become jetsam in the great storm of time. Oh well. At least I took photos and could reconstruct it if, you know, a publisher or agent ever wanted to publish “A NEW TITLE FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE UNIVERSALLY BELOVED BUGVERSE CHRONICLES!”
(Of which there might be maybe another…)
** At some point, we’re sure.
