SINGO, THE FLAMINGO
In 1967, when we learned that Margaret was going to give me a third child (didn’t know that it was to be a birthday gift, born on my September 4th birthday, Labor Dan, and the day before school started for the year. It is strange how our minds work. I just thought perhaps we had overspent on the $18,500 home we build in an upscale neighborhood in Greenfield, Indiana. In a panic and hoping to assist with finances, I decided to put my speech class project that had been the delight of so many first graders into a children’s book of my own creating. I thought that my being untrained as an artist needn’t discourage my attempts to put the whimsy into Singo’s pathetic story—which was my own biography in a way, never quite satisfied with myself and wishing to be something else. Incidentally, that home is now in the $150,000-200,000 range.
I think it was for my 70th birthday that Tammy took the very worn pages, once sewn together and sent, unsuccessfully, to Random House, and cleaned them up for self-publication as a surprise. It cleaned up well, although lots of the brush strokes were lost. I still think it is a darling book, and I use it as a special gift for special friends.
This week the book is on sale in hardback on lulu.com for $18.01. Lulu allows you to see and read the book without purchasing. Personally, I think the last page is overlong, but the number of pages was determined by examining (in 1967) books of Dr. Seuss and copying their format to make publishing by Random House more likely. When I had not heard from them in four months, I began to make phone calls to make sure the book, representing many hours of night labor while completing my MA at Ball State, was not lost forever. There were no copies, of course. Finally, someone gave me the right name to call, and her response was, “Oh, I remember that one. I passed on it. Don’t try to follow it! It is lying on someone’s desk pile, waiting.”
After the sixth month, it was returned with a rejection notice. No one has “found” it yet, but it’s out there. Take a look at it, please. Dr. Elizabeth Pilant, Ball State’s children’s lit specialist at that time, and its “most published” professor used it as a final exam for a few special students for a year or so, and I had used photo album corners to allow me to change the words on each page. When it got to the point that I could lift off the ‘patch’ and show that we were back to my original wordings, I pulled it and decided to trust myself.
AN EXPLANATION: Our lives have become quite busy lately, and with Tammy’s children here through the week, I find it hard to keep up the blog. I’ll try to get back to it. I thank you for following it.
