All Things Dragon.

I've always loved fantasy literature. I even took a class in it as an undergrad at UC Berkeley. And of course, The Chronicles of Narnia rank as my favorite children's books of all time. So it was my great hope that at least one of my children would share this love with me.

I discovered The Spiderwick Chronicles a few years ago. And as began to collect the books, I secretly hoped that Alex would soon be old enough to show interest in them. I loved the story. The books reminded me of Edward Eager's Half Magic which I loved when I was seven or eight years old, only Spiderwick was a little darker which I, of course, liked even better.

And then the movie was going to come out and in our long standing tradition of Reading Books Before Seeing the Movie, Alex and I read the books together. And he - loved them.

So one day, I was surfing the web and I came across the web site of the illustrator, Tony DiTerlizzi. By this time, Alex had requested and received for his birthday, Arthur Spiderwick's Illustrated Field Guide which is a compilation of Tony's incredible art work. It was then that Alex and I decided that for his Off Track Project he would write to Tony and send him an illustration of his own. The above picture is of a snakewyrm dragon he drew. I made him write the letter, which at first he resisted but then totally got into describing his dragon in great detail.

Well a few days ago a package arrived in the mail. Tony answered Alex's letter with a very gracious response and a drawing of his own for Alex. He also posted Alex's dragon on his web page along with a very nice comment.

We are extremely grateful to Mr. DiTerlizzi for being so generous to his younger fans. Alex shared his letter and artwork at his school and he now gets to write an article about his experience for the school newsletter. Pretty cool.

I'm amazed at how an act of generosity multiplies over and over again. Wishing you that Multiplication Moment this weekend.

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