That’s right: Roaring Brook Press did bowl me over at ALA! It happened on Friday evening. I was invited by Lauren Wohl to attend this lovely event. Lauren is responsible for many literacy memories for me.
I walked into the bowling alley where Roaring Brook had an entire room of lanes reserved for their event. Lauren instructed me to get some bowling shoes and find a lane that could use another bowler. I looked down the lanes and the lane farthest away had only one bowler. Plus it had the added advantage of being against a wall on the left side of the lane (rather than having lanes on either side.) So, I grabbed some bowling shoes and scooted down the lanes finding a just-right, light, red bowling ball along the way.
I trotted up to the bowler and introduced myself. He introduced himself to me. It was David Macaulay. What good luck I have! (He won the Caldecott for BLACK AND WHITE.) I joined him for a few practice frames and then Simon Boughton, publisher of Roaring Brook, joined us. Did I say what good luck I have?
During our practice frames, before starting our game, I released the bowling ball and slid down the alley. I fell, landed on my rear end, and started to slide. You know how when you are in distress you see things in slow motion? I could see the pins getting closer and bigger and I thought I might slide into the pins. Fortunately . . . I guess you could say fortunately . . . I slid into the gutter and that stopped my free-sliding. I thought for a second I was going to slide down the entire lane and end up knocking down the pins!
I bet David and Simon will both remember me . . . okay they might have to be prompted by the event, but I think there is a pretty good chance that they’ll always remember the woman sliding into the gutter.
Now that’s a literacy memory.
