SquarePeg Books

The first one of 2025.

Someone I admired as a child. In the early 1980’s it was…

Bill Cosby.

That choice did not age well.

Another in the same time frame was my 4th grade substitute teacher, Mr. Peyton.

I have no idea if that choice aged as badly or not.

So, maybe let’s look at what it was about them that drew my innocent gaze back in the late 1900’s.

They were both storytellers.

In middle school, I remember freaking out when I heard about book bannings. How could I tell stories if a small group of half-wits could outright ban them for “inappropriate content”? What the hell is the definition of “inappropriate content” when the phrase is applied to a book like Charlotte’s Web? (answer at the time: the animals display human intelligence and can talk = witchcraft)

The world moves on, the decades pass. You discover that some of your heroes are actually jerks. You learn that someone, somewhere, is going to find objectionable content in everything you do.

And if you pay attention, you learn you can’t change the world, but realize that if you can make someone forget about a bad day for a few minutes, then you’ve done your job.

And that’s good enough.

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