Book People Archive

Re: The sound of the word

 In the mid-1980s I wrote (typed) dozens of stories for my too-faraway 
grandkids. My stories are the mostly the non-violent sort. At first. I mailed
each story to my grandkids as soon as it was finished. During my rare visits I
became the family 'show-and-tell' at the youngsters school where I read my
stories aloud in classrooms in my normal gravelly grandpa voice, and answered 
questions. I learnd then from the children that for some of them grandparents
lived too far away or were not well enough to make the trip, others didn't
know whether they had grandparents, but saddest of all were youngsters who
didn't know what 'grandparents' were. 

My children's stories piled up. It occurred to me that maybe other
grandparents might be interested in what I had tried to do. I became a
self-publisher and produced my first book *Write Stories To Me, Grandpa!*
(sub-title: *Creating and Illustrating Read-aloud Letter Stories To Your
Young Grandchild*). I illustrated the book using contents of the Public
Domain *Hart Picture Archive.* If I couldn't find the right picture I
made my own all-thumbs original.  I sent a copy of the book to 'BOOKLIST'
and, to my amazement it got a very good review. I sent copies to other
reviewers and media columnists and they too, were kind. My first one-thousand
copies quickly sold out. 

I also wanted to reach children more directly--with my 'gravelly grandpa 
voice' that seemed to me had been well-received during the 'show-and-tell' 
sessions. So I taped my stories on two 90-minute tape cassettes: 1. *Tell Me
a Story, Grandpa!* and   2. *Tell Me Space Stories, Grandpa!* I had them
produced at a local recording shop, 1,000 copies of each. I sold quite a
few and donated most of them to public libraries. I got excellent feedback
from parents, children listened to the recorded stories over and over. 

The latest edition of the collection, titled; *A Grandpa's Notebook* is in 
Project Gutenberg at

> http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2737 <

My 2006 edition *Grandma! Grandpa! Write Stories to Me!* is done and needs a 
home somewhere an as an ebook.

Meyer Moldeven
(Yarnspinner7191@[redacted]