I’d like to share with you one thing I’ve learned as a parent: Someone around 6 or 7 years old, laughter changes. What was once a pure, unfiltered giggle, free from self-conscious dignity, turns into a stifled chuckle. You only get to hear so many pristine, belly busting giggles before you suddenly and belatedly realize that ship has sailed. While I have generated my fair share of unbridled giggling from my little humans, I have you and your books to thank for doubling the number of perfect peals of helpless, high pitched fits of precious laughter at our house before bedtime. For this I am eternally grateful.
What? Are you suggesting that children LAUGH at books of mine? Laugh? Giggle? And these are books you have read to them? Do you not understand, and make clear to your audience, that I am a serious writer? I practiced and studied, I attended schools and colleges, I forewent a rewarding career in some lucrative business, all in order that you should read my stuff to children who then LAUGH at it? And then you are so cruel as to tell me about it? Shame on you, sir. Shame on you.
