Inaugural Address

My name is Grace. I am awfully glad I have not been elected President. Washington did a much better job than I ever would. His inaugural address is certainly better than mine would be. And while I'm sure that the position is stimulating, I am quite content with the pace of my own life.

Now let me introduce myself. I was born in 1983, my favorite color is blue, my favorite food is cookies, and my favorite crochet hook is the red Boye G/6 that my Nana taught me to crochet with. I have three younger sisters, Hope, Faith, and Victory. I have been a reader almost all my life and a writer almost as long. The first story I remember writing was at age 8 in third grade. It was about the family farm and had something to do with grasshoppers, as I had been impressed with the abundance of them when we visited the land. Not long before, my mother had read to Hope and I about Laura Ingalls Wilder's youth in On the Banks of Plum Creek. Laura's locusts were in my mind also.

The first book I remember reading by myself was an I Can Read book called Little Bear by Elsa Holmelund Minarik. I still savor the simplicity of children's literature, and the sweetness of the conversations that Little Bear had with Mother Bear. There is no wonder about why my first completed manuscript was a children's picture book. I am still trying to get an agent to sell that book, but while I wait, I write. And work. And read. And crochet.