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Confession: I’m not sure if this is technically a piece of “fan mail.” The United States Postal Service was not involved, and it did not arrive to me via email. This note was handed to me toward the end of a school visit in Mahwah, NJ.
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I read the note — those extraordinary thoughts — and I looked at the young girl before me. “Is this for me? To keep?”
She nodded, shyly.
“Would it be okay,” I asked, “if we took a picture together?”
She thought that would be fine.
So here we are (note: permission granted by Sorella’s parents).
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Days have now passed, a full week come and gone. I still wanted to respond in some way. But how? What words could I say beyond, simply, thanks?
My response below falls short, I suspect, but it’s something.
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Dear Sorella:
It’s been a week since we meet at your school, Joyce Kilmer, somewhere in deepest, darkest New Jersey. Since then I’ve gone to concerts, read a lot, seen a movie, visited with family, walked my dog a million times, done all sorts of things . . . and yet I keep thinking about you and the kind note (with blobs of silver glitter!) that you handed to me in Mahwah.
I’m sure that I don’t deserve it. I mean, I don’t think your note is really about me, “the real James Preller,” author of books for young readers. Instead, I think you captured something about how some of us feel about books and reading. You see, I’m a book lover, too. We have that in common. I know that feeling, of just holding a book in your hands, and in your heart, and feeling the wonder of it all, the deep pleasure of connection. Whole new worlds opening up before our eyes.
It’s amazing what a book can do. How we can sit silently, perfectly still, alone in a room, and yet feel intensely connected to the characters and events and, yes, even the author. We can read a book written more than a hundred years ago by a woman in a small English village and feel her thoughts and imaginings, intensely. I’m thinking, by the way, of Beatrice Potter, who published The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1901. Potter is a personal favorite of mine, but I could have named anyone, really. We read a book and travel across time and space. We sit alone and yet we are not alone. We are free. As if we were sitting around the same fire. “Companions of the flame,” wrote the poet Hilda Doolittle.
If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
Speaking for every author I’ve ever met, thank you, Sorella, for the gift of being that good reader. I’ve long felt that books are only alive when they are read. Otherwise, it’s just a waste of a perfectly good tree. When my work is done, the book is no longer mine anymore. It’s yours, Dear Reader, Dearest Sorella. Magically, amazingly, you sat in a room and made it all come true.
I’m grateful for you, and grateful for the kind heart that moved you to say such lovely words. “Flowers for the living,” the Irish expression tells us. I don’t deserve them, but I do accept them, gratefully, as a stand-in for anyone who’s ever dreamed of writing a book. Here’s the secret: The dream isn’t to write a book. The dream is for someone like you to come along one day and read it.
Please keep reading, keep seeking new books, new authors. There are so many, many good ones out there. And, oh yes, please keep writing, too. And drawing. And decorating your missives with glue and silver glitter. You have a gift for it.
Your forever friend,
James Preller
P.S. Please thank your wonderful and talented media specialist, Mrs. Oates. She’s the one who did all the work. Long ago, she invited me come to your school. We exchanged a dozen emails. And she put in all that work for you, for every student at Joyce Kilmer. I’m just the guy who got swept up in her good intentions. Lucky me.
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