This is such a fun post to write! It's a follow-up to the post I wrote earlier this week about the BEAUTIFUL book of haiku poetry and commentary for children by Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen and art by Tracy Gallup; here's that post: My First Book of Haiku Poems.
So, when I read their book, I also discovered Tracy Gallup's website, and I sent her fan mail, and she was kind enough to write me back, and I learned that not only does she have a new book, My First Book of Zen: Simple Wisdom for Children, available for preorder at Amazon (I preordered!), but also that the book has actually been printed already............ and look at this: that's Tracy Gallup with my friend and creative colleague, Liz Ilawan, at the American Library Association conference in Philadelphia TODAY — and there is the book!
Yes, that's right: Liz got to meet Tracy Gallup and now has an actual copy of My First Book of Zen, signed by the author.
I still can't get over the great synchronicity that led me to discover the haiku book just this week, and then for Liz to be able to meet Tracy Gallup in person. How cool is that???
I'll say a little bit about Liz here: we first met IN THE PREVIOUS MILLENNIUM (in 1999) in my first semester at the University of Oklahoma; I think Liz was a first-year student then, or maybe a sophomore? Anyway, that's when we met! Another faculty member in my department had brought Liz to my office and said, "You have to meet Liz!" (Liz, do you remember when Peggy did that???)
Back then, it was unusual for faculty to be publishing webpages, and even more unusual for students to publish webpages as part of a class, but I was all about the web-for-everyone (back before there were platforms manipulating and exploiting us and now AI ripping us off and deceiving us... argh!). So, in my mythology and folklore classes the students and I created webpages together, sharing our work online (here's a keynote with me looking back on those decades of happy web publishing with students: Open Creativity, Randomized).
And that means I have the honor of being the person who first prompted Liz to publish her first webpages, and now here we are 25 years later when Liz is an expert web designer and creator of learning materials both analog and digital. Check out her website at TheCreativeMindset.com and especially her StorySproutz project. I am so impressed by her commitment to young learners and their creative powers! It's thanks to Liz that I started developing my riddle game, and I'm also hoping that Liz and I can create some haiku materials together too (the haiku game I've written about at this blog actually happened because I was trying to think of a riddle game to help people learn about riddle traditions; so, Know-Your-Haiku actually started as Know-Your-Riddles – I'll say more about haiku and riddles in a future post because I've been thinking about that a lot).
Anyway, I am just thrilled to SEE Liz Ilawan and Tracy Gallup together in this picture surrounded by librarians and educators and books books books. That gives me hope in this sometimes hopeless-seeming educational landscape. And very soon I will have my own copy of My First Book of Zen to read and enjoy; you know I will be writing about the book here as soon as it arrives (Amazon says: August!).
Yay for serendipity and the old-fashioned people-to-people Internet: websites by humans for humans, so we can connect and share and learn together!