Fan Mail Wednesday #101

This lovely letter comes from Paige, and she even drew pictures of six little hamsters.

How lucky am I?

I replied:

Dear Paige:

Wow, you are a writer and an illustrator. That way you can do your own books and not have to share the money! When I do picture books, like Wake Me In Spring or A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade, I only get half because I’m not good enough to draw my own pictures.

Grrrrrr.

It’s a funny thing about that first Jigsaw Jones book. You are right, Mila is allergic to fur, so Jigsaw uses her as a hamster detector –- she sneezes when the hamster is near.

Illustration by R. W. Alley.

However, I soon realized that I had written myself into a corner. Do you know that expression? Maybe it would help if I showed you a picture . . .

Anyway, Jigsaw has a big, furry dog named Rags. I couldn’t have Mila sneezing all the time in every book! That would get pretty gross. If Mila was allergic to fur, she couldn’t be hanging out with Rags. So in a later book, I mentioned that Mila had new allergy medicine that worked really, really well. That way Mila and Rags could be friends.

Thanks for reading my books. Keep up the good work!

JP

P.S. This is the cover of Wake Me In Spring, a book I wrote more than 15 years ago. Jeffrey Scherer drew the illustrations — and I think he did an awesome job!

2 comments

  1. Doret says:

    Paige’s penmanship is better then mine. Sadly I am not even kidding.

    My penmanship has never been great but it gotten worse over the years. Thanks to more time on computer and less time using an actual pen.

  2. jimmy says:

    I’m right there with you, Doret. It hardly seems to matter.

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