George Rappole

March 5, 2000

Daniel, sir, I was delighted by the review of the Bears’race to Fitchburg. After badgering my bookseller and my library about a book named as a Trip to Pittsburgh, I realized that my handy PC might have something less frustrating. And,lo, out of the box comes the answer. What joy! This does nothing for your royalties but all in due course. At the moment, thank you for this and other earlier revelations of life on the banks of the Hudson. Your accounts of the current scene are appreciated by this former resident of Sleepy Hollow,long since moved to Puget Sound.

We have in nearby Mountlake Terrace, in front of the library, a most wonderful and fascinating nearly full size bronze sculpture of a little girl in pigtails riding on the back of a friendly bear followed by two cubs. The artist is Georgia Gerber,also a Washington State resident. Had I a scanner I would send you a copy of my photo of the piece. What a wonderful journey it suggests!

Thank you again–

George Rappole

I get a fantastic kick out of finding really good children's books, and discussing them on the air with Scott Simon once a month. The books I pick represent a fairly tiny fraction of what I see, much of which is utter crap. If we do this for a long long time, the business-heads may notice that books we feature tend to sell lots of copies. So far, they're becoming aware that books I talk about have good sales, but they seem to believe that I have some kind of magic grease in my perspiration, and if I would rub their usual products with my palms, sales would improve for those too. Bless their hearts, I've been doing business with them for about 30 years.