Your Smile for Today:

"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It is jolted by every pebble on the road."

~ Henry Ward Beecher, Social reformer, clergyman, author, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Robert Munsch ~ "Kids Get Up and Leave"

"Kids either keep laughing, or, if they don't like the story, they get up and leave. That's the honest feedback I depend on."

Children's author, Robert Munsch, made up 519 stories over two years and read them to kids in the day-care center where he worked at the time. Out of those 519 stories, he had ten "good stories."
"For a story to be worthy of becoming a book, it must pass a series of tests," Munsch explains. He tells it in the city, in the country, in the north of Canada, the south and then into the Arctic. "Sometimes a story isn't publishable simply because it's too tightly woven into one particular community" he says. *

Every Wednesday is Story Hour in The Neat Little Bookshop. We can vouch for Munsch's theory. Kids love books. They love a good story read with enthusiasm ~ and they get up and leave if they don't like the story.

For first-time authors this is helpful advice: Read aloud to a live audience. (Find Thumper the Rabbit in the red towel; Gizmo the Pekingese on the stool.) You may have to click on photo for larger image.

*Meet the Authors and Illustrators, Deborah Kovacs and James Preller, Scholastic 1991.

Family Holidays

(For larger image, click on photo ~ Lorna)

"FOR MY FATHER ~ Every man needs a hero. I was born to mine."

Maury Allen, American sportswriter, author (b. 1932) Book dedication to his father.

Where Have you Gone, Joe DiMaggio? The Story of America's Last Hero.

Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, 1975.

A Day Without Laughter

"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."

~ e. e. cummings, Edward Cummings (1894 - 1962) American poet, author.

Jeremy Henatyzen, author of A White Pebble, the first in a trilogy of literary fiction, takes a break to talk about his sequel A Black Pebble.

We will be following this story to see whether Luther is dead or alive!

Your Smile for Today

"Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Two things stand like stone ~

Kindness in another's trouble,

Courage in our own."

~ Richard Harris Barham, English novelist (1788 - 1845) Ingoldsby Legends