call me crazy...

I think I'm being kinda silly here. I'm not sure there are many people who could truly understand the excitement I'm feeling about this. I am quite positive that there are many people who would roll their eyes or snicker behind their hands or even question if I'm on the path to becoming a stalker. Well, here it is...

I think Mo Willems may have possibly, perhaps, just maybe visited my blog.

Okay, I've said it. Now don't worry, I'm not some crazy obsessed fan who's going to try tracking him down in real life, but I'm so totally worked up at the teeny tiny possibility that his eyes may have read the words that came from my head about my amazing experience with his books. I know, I know, I don't do well with potential brushes with celebrity, as I clearly demonstrated here back in August. But let me explain.

So, I have two ways of seeing if there are actual live human beings visiting my little space on the web- my little Frappr map over there to the right and a cool analytics program offered by Google. The Frappr map requires people to click on it and add themselves to the map. (If you're reading these words at this very moment and you've yet to add yourself, just head over to the right side of the page and join us. C'mon, all the cool kids are doing it!) I've so enjoyed seeing the dots appear on the map- I've reconnected with a few dear old friends from college, and I've been amazed at the number of people named Anonymous out there- you're everywhere it seems! The Google program simply tracks the number of visits, reports the general areas from which visitors hail, and analyzes lots of other data that goes right over my head. According to them, I've had readers to this very little blog from 8 countries, including Romania! That absolutely amazes me. Me, who has travelled out of the country only twice in my life (if you can really count driving to Canada for a weekend in college because the drinking age was lower...) Needless to say, I do enjoy discovering that there are people reading this.

Back to Mo. Okay, let me say that to truly understand the significance of this possibility of a visit by said amazing author, you must understand how important children's literature is to me. In my ten years as a preschool teacher, story times have undoubtedly been my favorite experiences. Even on those days when I had been alternately puked on, snotted on, screamed at, or been called a 'mean' teacher (thankfully those days weren't all that often, but boy oh boy, when one did occur it was all or nothing, you know?), sitting down with a group of children and a good book could wash it all away. Sorta like Calgon for that mom in the old commercial, you know? I can totally get lost in a read aloud. Back at my old lab school on a university campus, I had the great privilege to appear numerous times as a guest speaker in an undergraduate children's literature class to talk about the value of reading aloud to young children. The only conference sessions that I ever gave- both locally and nationally- have been about children's literature one way or another. This is a subject as near and dear to my heart as it gets. And so many of these experiences have revolved around the fantastic books Mo Willems has created. I can't count the number of times I have read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus aloud to children. (And with every single read aloud, I hear my then-three-year-old-son's-speech-delayed-voice calling the middle of the book 'the fweeking out page.')

While posting about my wonderful experience in the big kid's class the other day, I was reading things about Mr. Willems online, and I was overjoyed to discover that he has a blog out there. Ooh, how excited did I become? This big, big world is shrinking every day as the Internet is becoming so user generated. Honestly, with somewhat shaking hands, I typed in a comment on his blog and said that I had just that very day shared his Pigeon stories with my son's class. On a whim, I left my blog address. I thought to myself, "Eh, he may not even do this thing himself- maybe he's got a guy to do it for him." The comment had to be approved by the moderator to be posted, and lo and behold, the next day there it was.

This discovery prompted an immediate click over to Google Analytics, and you know what I found? A visitor from Brooklyn, NY, on the very day that my comment was approved on his blog. Guess where Mo hails from. Okay, there is a huge, huge possibility that there was another fine Brooklynite who found his or her way over to my little space, but... there's also the possibility that this author who I feel has brought such happiness to my experiences with children- my many students and my own three younguns- may just have come to read my words about his works. Wow. Then today, I see a new dot on the map. Anonymous also resides in... you guessed it... Brooklyn, NY.

Okay, so if you are my mysterious Brooklynite visitor and you are NOT Mo Willems, you know what? You don't have to reveal your true identity to me. It's okay. Just let me revel in the possibility that this funky invention of Al Gore's, (the wonderful Internet, that is... ha!), may just have connected me to my very favorite children's author. This is a very nice feeling indeed.