21 Feb“Tory Anderson, You Rock!”

I was sitting behind Mrs. Creager’s desk in the front corner of her sixth grade classroom. Her first hour reading class had just ended. I was the guest speaker for that hour and gave a presentation on reading and writing to the kids. Mrs. Creager had been reading my novel, “Joey and the Magic Map,” to the kids. She said they had been enjoying it very much. The kids had given me a warm welcome and were wonderfully responsive. I would be presenting to another period of kids, later, but first she had to perform a test review for a different group of kids who had just trickled into the room. Some of these kids were in another reading class of Mrs. Creager’s and knew who I was.

The test review went something like this.

Mrs. Creager: “What was the Romans’ primary trade crop?”

The kids would write their answer on a hand-held whiteboard that each had picked up on their way to their desk and hold it up for Mrs. Creager to see. She would check their answers and then go on to the next question. I was having fun listening to the questions and trying to come up with the answers in my head before the kids got their white boards up. They usually won. One round of questions went a little differently.

Mrs. Creager: “Who was Julius Caesar’s grandnephew?”

Up went the whiteboards with the answers. I looked at the boards of the kids nearest me, and then by chance I looked across the room through a forest of whiteboards. A whiteboard with a different answer stood out amid the others. It was held by a skinny little girl with a smile as bright as the sun. I had noticed her when she came in the room. She was wearing purple jeans with a matching sweater accented by burgundy polka dots. On her whiteboard, in her hurried “answer-the-question-fast” scrawl, was written, “TORY ANDERSON, YOU ROCK!”

Maybe your Dean Coontz’s, Stephanie Myer’s, and John Grisham’s are immune to the effects of such adulation, but I’m an unknown, fledgling author. I was . . . well, startled. The look on my face was probably laughable. She just continued with that radiant smile while I got a hold of myself and smiled back in acknowledgement. The feeling I felt from that surprise is too wonderful to describe. It has nothing to do with fame. One sixth-grade fan does not a famous writer make. The feeling I felt was from recognizing I was in the presence of an extraordinary human being. This girl was in the review class because, like the others, she had failed the test. Like the rest she wanted to get the information she needed to pass the test. Amid this concern her thoughts were large enough to send one my direction. Mrs. Creager asked a question. Nineteen kids wrote “Augustus” on their boards. The twentieth wrote “TORY ANDERSON, YOU ROCK!” on hers.

Maybe this young girl was star-struck in a misguided way? I don’t think so. After the class she didn’t stare at me with big eyes, or approach me adoringly. No, she walked out chatting with a friend. So where did this “TORY ANDERSON, YOU ROCK!” come from? I’ll never know for sure. Mrs. Creager told me that this girl really likes my book, but so did most of the other kids. Several other kids came up to me and told me so throughout the day. But none said it in such a delightful and surprising way as this little girl. I can only think this girl is an artist. She liked my book and found an extraordinary way of telling me. That’s what artist’s do—they find ways of making the ordinary extra-ordinary. The delight she painted on my soul was art of the highest order.