If you squint and look closely you’ll see a rainbow arching behind Portland’s Hawthorne Bridge in this photo. It blazed across the sky after one of those December deluges that leaves your pants soaked to the knees–even though you’re carrying an umbrella which has probably turned inside out anyway.
Rainbows are like finished stories. You’ve slogged through first drafts and revisions, pulled characters out of storm drains, and forced plots to flow into the ditches you dug for them. Then you towel your hair dry, sit down with a hot cup of cocoa, and read through your final draft. At that moment, you realize that your story dazzles the mind like a rainbow dazzles the eye.
This year, you have all dazzled and surprised and delighted me with your stories. I have traveled places I never would have gone and met characters I never could have created. Like any other reading nut, I am grateful to all of the storytellers whose words I get to read. In 2011, I expect to be as energized by your work as I have been in 2010.
The true treasure at the end of the rainbow has always been the stories we tell about what can be found there. Here’s to happy holidays and to continuing the storyteller’s journey in the new year. Keep those stories coming and kids will always find treasure at rainbow’s end.
Bespectacled & Bookish 
When I took a Children’s Literature class in college back in the 1970’s, I fell in love with picture books. I remember thinking I’d love to write one someday. But after reading over 200 of them for class, I thought every story had already been told. Age and wisdom has since set me straight!
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The fun of reading is to discover how many ways there are of telling the “same” stories. Every human being brings a totally unique mindset to the world and when a writer brings that unique way of “seeing” to the page it makes that writer’s stories “new”.
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