Thank You, Ms. Stuart

 When I was in the fourth grade, I wrote a story called Arthur The Fish. It told the story of a lonely misfit, a pink fish with purple spots who went out into the great big ocean to find a friend. So taken with this tale of existential blues, my teacher asked if I would be willing to turn it into a book, complete with illustrations by yours truly. Two years earlier I had some success with one of my first efforts, The Drunken Snake, which I followed up with the tale of Snoopy becoming the quarterback of the Denver Broncos. Both of these stories were essentially excuses to draw the pictures of what was going on in my mind. In this way, a thousand words was worth a picture. 

Arthur was different. I was going to need a dozen or more illustrations, one for each page and another for the cover. The chore of drawing the same fish twelve was a daunting one for nine year old me. Then there was the matter of figuring out exactly where the page breaks should come. This turned out to be a pretty simple exercise, giving each sentence its own page. Not exactly the editorial challenge of a lifetime, unless you happened to be a fourth grader who was being published for the first time. I handed my marked-up copy to my teacher who lovingly reproduced my prose in large type, with a few extra copies in case I made mistakes. 

I set to work at my desk with my pencil and a half dozen colored markers. Coming up with the cartoon fish was easy enough. The inking and coloring were the most painstaking part of the job. When I was finished, I resubmitted my literary effort to my biggest fan and harshest critic, Ms. Stuart. After a quick once over, we agreed that we would go ahead with the next step: binding. 

My father worked in the printing business, and I had some passing experience with binding books. I had seen the machinery involved. These were not employed in the binding of Arthur The Fish. Ms. Stuart took Arthur into the teacher's lounge, and when she came back I was handed a comb-bound edition of my first book that included a clear plastic cover to protect it from the elements and the wear and tear of the tour I was about to undergo. 

Ms. Stuart arranged for me to go to several classrooms to share my book with other students at my school. Flattered, but also fully aware that this would mark me forever as a teacher's pet, I went bravely from room to room sharing Arthur's adventures in undersea ennui. Which went well until I showed up in the fifth grade class, where the kids were a year older than me, and the curiosity of a child author was wasted on them. I returned to my homeroom with my pride battered but not broken. 

More than fifty years later, I continue to bash away at this writing gig, trying to capture that feeling one more time.