From: Sally Miller <derbymiller>
Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 16:49:36 -0400

    Like Ruth Gordon, I was a child of the great depression, but I did own three dearly-loved books. Ferdinand and Little Black Sambo you are all familiar with, but I wonder if anyone besides me remembers Tony Brice's "So Long." The part of the book that inspired three year old giggles was when So Long was stretched "so long he couldn't fit on one page," and the picture of the little dachshund stretched across two pages. Remembering that book reminds me of how important humor is to pre-schoolers and what a gift it is in books for them.
     For the most part, I was a well-behaved little girl, but I remember throwing one monumental temper-tantrum. An encyclopedia salesman came to our house and showed my parents (and me) the Childcraft encyclopedia. I was enthralled, and when I thought that he was leaving and taking the books away with him so that I could never see the pages he hadn't shown me, the grief was too much for an eight year old. It took my mother some time to calm me down enough to explain that my father was buying those wonderful books, but that they would arrive later, after they were completely paid for. I spent years with them, but, alas my mother was not a saver and while I was away at college they disappeared, along with many of my childhood favorites. All I remember of them now is the sense of inexhaustible discovery available whenever I opened them.
    As a mid-list children's writer, I hope that somewhere there is a child who treasures one of my books as much as I treasured mine. "So Long" never won an award that I am aware of, but it has stayed in my memory for years.

Sally Derby --new this fall, "Whoosh Went the Wind!"
Received on Tue 23 May 2006 03:49:36 PM CDT