Why so long? I was waiting for the magical moment when I felt the right story call to me. It’s taken me forty years to be ready to write Ninth Ward, my second children’s book. I was the kid they called “little professor” and the one always asking, teachers and librarians, “More, please.” Books were better than food. I was the kid who preferred books to dolls. It was a very thin book, bound in yellow construction paper, and illustrated by me! I read it aloud to my Homewood Elementary School classmates and thought I was in heaven. I wrote my first children’s book, The Last Scream, when I was eight years old. Like Mother Nature has sucked up everything-all sounds, winds, human talk and cries. The quiet makes me think I’m going to die. Not even fat water bugs that come out when you turn down the lights. The lamp on the nightstand makes the room glow, seem unreal. I must’ve fallen asleep, because when I wake, Mama Ya-Ya has her hands thrown over her head and she is sleeping deeply. The weatherman says, “Katrina is headed directly for New Orleans. If we were watching Oprah, we’d be having a good time. At the bottom of the bed, Spot is lying on his back, his belly up. I sit beside her, a pillow behind my back. I press the power button and the screen lights up, and there he is, the sweaty weather man.
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