ONE MORE QUESTION

I’m so happy you liked the little children's tale of More Questions. Only a dozen people own this little one (so far). This is the sort of children's book I write.

Can I make it onto the "Today Show" showcasing this sort of book? — the camera pulling in for a Hitchcock closeup of my hand opening (ala Ingrid Bergman and the key-in-her-hand scene from "Notorious") and inside my callused palm is the book.

"Oh gee", Matt Lauer whims, "there's the book."

I nod with one of those backwoods slightly demented grins.

"It looks like it is short enough for you to read it all to our viewers right now Bob, would you?"

I do. It takes about a minute, and when I'm done, off-camera (but it quickly shoots to him), the weatherman Al Roker can be heard quipping, "That's it? That's it?!" Obviously sugared up on his bolt of morning java and not ready for rural dreamy ABCs.

The second camera stays on me as I hear the Roker dismissal and I'm now with a look of a bothered owl, not a good sign.

Matt Lauer is holding court and the tension at bay between the weatherman — a sassy and quick-witted black guy and not a sixties radical contingent busted off from the SDS — and the backwooded and patient children's book author me.

This always happens when books are read aloud these days. Someone out there just has to have a complaint.

Whatever happened to getting everyone in a cozy circle and just listening awhile? The campfire light dancing our faces.

Bob Arnold says, it's great to have recognition, even better to write the book you always wanted.



photo © bob arnold