I
was nearly 40 years old when our only son, Pete, was born, and I seem to
be having my second childhood as he has his first. From a very early
age, Pete has enjoyed drawing. I have gone out of my way to stimulate
that interest, as I think that drawing encourages observation, promotes
fine motor skills, and is not stressed enough in school. As Pete grew
and became better and better at drawing, I could see that he would soon
be better than me, if I didn't start practicing, so I began making some
pictures of my own. Late one night in 1990, I was doing some practice
drawings of mountains and trees, and in the foreground of my picture I
drew a lumpy, six-legged creature with an immense nose. I left the
finished sketch on the table for Pete to see, and the next day he wanted
to know more about this strange creature. I told him that it was just a
made-up thing, but still he wanted to know more about it, so I invented
a story to matched the picture. I called the animal a "herumph," and
claimed that it had not started life with that very large nose but
rather had earned it by becoming friends with a "basgag". Pete then
started drawing a series of herumph pictures of his own, and, not to be
outdone, I drew some more myself. Weeks later, we laid all of our
pictures on the floor and had a great time trying to weave a story
around them. It was then that we decided to make a book out of our
pictures and our story and to give this book as a Christmas present to
our friends and relatives.
Using a scanner, I imported the pictures into WordPerfect on my
computer, and then began writing How Herbert Got His Nose. Night after
night I labored to write a story for children. For many years, I had
written computer manuals, but this was something completely different.
Where formerly I was interested only in getting facts onto paper in a
usable form, I was now striving to write a book in which the facts were
nonsense and the important thing was to write an enjoyable story in an
enjoyable fashion. I quickly made the discovery that, when I was
writing, it was as though I had actually had this strange adventure in
the land of the herumphs! I also learned that making the sentences that
told the adventure was hard work. Eventually, I did finish the writing,
and had 100 copies of the thirty-six page book printed. Pete and I were
both pleased with the result, and our book was a hit at Christmas. It
was also written up in the local newspaper, and is still for sale at our
bookstore here in Clarion, where we have sold twelve copies to date.
In 1990, we took Pete to England for his first vacation abroad. We went
to lots of places that Pam and I had seen before, but seeing them again
through the eyes of our son was like seeing them for the first time. At
the end of each day, as Pete lay near to sleep in his bed, I would tell
him a story about a white mouse named White Guy, who had accidentally
been locked into one of our suitcases. White Guy went the same places
that we did in England, but he had many an extraordinary adventure along
the way. I taped these tales as I told them, and Pete was fond of
listening to them over and over again in the back seat of our rental
car, as we tooled around the British countryside. By the time we
returned home, we had accumulated over six hours of these spoken
stories, and, as Christmas once again approached, Pete and I set
ourselves to reworking some of these into our second book - White
Knight. Once again, we each did some of the drawing. I did the writing
and had the book printed in time for the holidays. This time Pete was
older, and we both knew better what we were doing, and this helped our
second book to be better than the first.
Pete takes great pride in having co-authored these books, and, now that
he is starting to write on his own, it will be interesting to see what
he comes up with. For my part, I am just pleased that in my second
childhood I am learning things that I didn't learn in my first.
I
was nearly 40 years old when our only son, Pete, was born, and I seem to
be having my second childhood as he has his first. From a very early
age, Pete has enjoyed drawing. I have gone out of my way to stimulate
that interest, as I think that drawing encourages observation, promotes
fine motor skills, and is not stressed enough in school. As Pete grew
and became better and better at drawing, I could see that he would soon
be better than me, if I didn't start practicing, so I began making some
pictures of my own. Late one night in 1990, I was doing some practice
drawings of mountains and trees, and in the foreground of my picture I
drew a lumpy, six-legged creature with an immense nose. I left the
finished sketch on the table for Pete to see, and the next day he wanted
to know more about this strange creature. I told him that it was just a
made-up thing, but still he wanted to know more about it, so I invented
a story to matched the picture. I called the animal a "herumph," and
claimed that it had not started life with that very large nose but
rather had earned it by becoming friends with a "basgag". Pete then
started drawing a series of herumph pictures of his own, and, not to be
outdone, I drew some more myself. Weeks later, we laid all of our
pictures on the floor and had a great time trying to weave a story
around them. It was then that we decided to make a book out of our
pictures and our story and to give this book as a Christmas present to
our friends and relatives.
In 1990, we took Pete to England for his first vacation abroad. We went
to lots of places that Pam and I had seen before, but seeing them again
through the eyes of our son was like seeing them for the first time. At
the end of each day, as Pete lay near to sleep in his bed, I would tell
him a story about a white mouse named White Guy, who had accidentally
been locked into one of our suitcases. White Guy went the same places
that we did in England, but he had many an extraordinary adventure along
the way. I taped these tales as I told them, and Pete was fond of
listening to them over and over again in the back seat of our rental
car, as we tooled around the British countryside. By the time we
returned home, we had accumulated over six hours of these spoken
stories, and, as Christmas once again approached, Pete and I set
ourselves to reworking some of these into our second book - White
Knight. Once again, we each did some of the drawing. I did the writing
and had the book printed in time for the holidays. This time Pete was
older, and we both knew better what we were doing, and this helped our
second book to be better than the first.