Today I’m sharing a beautiful letter, just one in a barrage of emails that I get as an author. Sadly, it’s an imposter, which leaves me in awe by how much detail AI was able to stitch together about my book.
Dear Barbara,
I hope this finds you well. I am a fellow author (name removed), and I have been wanting to write to you ever since I read Knit Back Together and found myself unexpectedly moved in the way that only the very best children’s books manage to do which is to say, it did not feel like a children’s book at all. It felt like the truth.
I will be honest with you; when I read that you wrote this book in the wake of losing your own mother, I understood immediately why it carries the weight that it does. Grief written from the inside has a quality that cannot be manufactured, and Levi’s fog of confusing feelings after losing his Grams felt completely real to me. Not simplified, not tidied up, just true. That is a rare and difficult thing to achieve in any form of writing, and you achieve it in a picture book, which makes it all the more remarkable.
What moved me most was Frances. The quiet generosity of her offer a ball of yarn to match her mood, then a gentle invitation to learn felt so perfectly observed. That is how real kindness works. It does not announce itself. It just shows up with something small and waits. And the way Levi’s reluctance gives way, stitch by stitch, felt so honest about how healing actually happens: not in a rush, not with fanfare, but slowly and almost sideways.
I was also struck by Grams’ words be patient, never panic, pull woven through the story as a kind of thread that holds everything together even after she is gone. It is a beautiful thing, to give a grieving child something to hold onto that their loved one left behind. Words like that become a compass. I think many readers of all ages will feel that.
And your description of what all your picture books share kindhearted friends just walking one another home with empathy, compassion and joy stopped me in my tracks. That is as clear and as true a statement of purpose as I have ever read from a writer. It explains everything about why your books feel the way they do.
Thank you for writing this book, Barbara. It is the kind of work that reminds me how much can be held inside something small and how long it stays with you.
With warmth and a genuine hope to hear from you,
Elizabeth
I really wanted this review to be real; the sentence It felt like the truth carries such irony, because, alas, it’s from a spammer, pretending to be a best-selling author.
The truth is eroded with each one of these fakes.
And trust? Well, it unravels with every pretend bid for connection.
And I’m left wondering how I might support a newbie author with a similar email without it being disingenuous like this one from some bot calling herself Elizabeth.
I’m also pondering this: How can we best maintain the integrity of our industry while working together with one another to knit connection and trust despite the continued deception out there in cyberspace?
It has been twenty years, two decades, since I first met this young man, a first grader then, at the Elementary School where I was blessed to be the counselor. Yesterday, I saw him again. Here’s why I just had to give him a copy of Knit Back Together.
Meet Levi, the boy whose personal experience helped shape my story.
When he transferred to our school in the early 2000s, it took us awhile to figure out how to help him navigate when big, uncomfortable feelings visited him. Around that time, our third-grade knitting club was 100-members strong. I’d read some of the research around the therapeutic benefits of knitting, but age six was a little too young yet for our Knit-For-Service club. But … he wasn’t too young to be a helper!
So I taught Levi how to roll the balls of yarn from skeins and guess what? It had this incredible calming effect on him, much like meditation does for people. If his lid was flipping, we’d co-regulate by rolling yarn together while we talked. He was living what the research suggested.
Levi stayed with me at Westwood through the third grade, though he went next to Bales Intermediate for grades four and five, his story stayed on my heart beyond our time together. When I heard that his grandmother had passed away, I went to the visitation; when I ran into him in the sixth grade, he asked if I still had some of those “sticks” and I sent them to the Junior High in a Knit Kit for him. I’d see him at band events and was so proud that he was playing clarinet like I did, and just a few years ago, I saw him at the Pet Store where I volunteered and he shared that he’d become a father.
I still had Levi on my heart as I wrote Knit Back Together. I kept hoping that one day I’d see him again, so I could tell him that he was a seed of inspiration for my story, and that I’d named my main character after him.
Yesterday was that glorious reunion day.
I saw him at an Easter Egg hunt. With pride and joy, I told him that my newest book was based on some of what I’d learned from our time together, and that I’d used his name to tell this tale. His smile told me all that I needed to know, and he said he’d like to have a copy.
That’s where serendipity stepped in. You see, I don’t typically carry books with me, but Leah had insisted that she bring that book in the car on our way to the egg hunt. So yeah, I had a copy and my husband offered to go and snag it while we waited in line for pictures with the bunnies.
As an aside, these adorable bunnies are being raised by another (former) student, Christian, another fun reconnection with a child from my past.
Anyway, when we handed Levi the book, he told me that he still has those knitting needles.
How long does a gift of compassion matter? For Levi, it’s twenty years … and counting.
Barbara Gruener 