A favorite book

This was a custom piece from a very old book...I think a Golden Book from the 50's or 60's...
A very special gift from one teacher to another.....it reminds me of my first books in school...the look Jane look books, as I use to call them...with Spot ...the dog...lol...even as a child I loved the illustrations , but thought the story was silly and too wordy...but then I had been read Pooh, all the classic fairy tales and fables ,and Beatrix Potter from the cradle, so my taste was a little broader when I started school.. My mother taught us all to read, before we started school.....I remember telling my first grade teacher, that the books were boring and for babies... as I stood there in my pink smocked dress, Mary Janes with laced trim ankle socks and my hair in pigtails with big pink satin ribbons.......
...my first grade year was long, with a teacher that did not find me charming......oh lets be real !she really truly couldn't stand me......lol...she was also the same teacher, that told my parents , I held my pencil the wrong way, a cramped hand and would never be able to letter properly.....my mother had also taught me to write the alphabet and tell time, my numbers and a little adding and subtracting....not good...teachers , at least in my experience, hated that... they liked a clean slate... today they would have put me in an advanced class...but in 1956, I was stuck in a boring class with a mean teacher...OK, it was probably not that bad, but to this day, that is the way I remember it...... I still hold my pencil, pen or paintbrush the same way.....the callous that most artists have on their middle finger, on me, is on the finger next to my pinkie ...my teacher would constantly come up behind me, and rearrange my pencil , then would hoover while I wrote...

today my parents would have put me in therapy, because I was traumatized... at the time, my parents just said... it is only a year...just wait... next year will be better... it sure was.... my second grade teacher was so sweet and found me totally charming ... by this time I was already showing talent in art..... and she was having me work on murals , and special projects... she loved art and I was her prized pupil, erasing all of the first grade trauma...lol.. funny enough, I never had a teacher after the first grade correct the way I held anything....life should be so easy when you are an adult...sadly at my age i am lucky to remember where my shoes are...but I remember my second grade teacher...Mrs. Perry....and of course my first garde teacher..Miss Bamler..isn't that just like life...the good and the bad...lol