What’s So Grand about Grandchildren?

It is no wonder we call them grand children and they call us grand parents. From the moment they arrive, they transform us into the grandest we have ever been. They give us new names, and we are never the same. They fill our hearts with love and laughter and other wondrous gifts of grandeur.
 
The first time my grand daughter, Charlotte Rose, called me “Gooooose,” short for Grandpa Goose, a derivative of my pseudonym Father Goose, I knew I had been anointed. Oh the smiles and giggles and make-believe silly stories we share. One would think we had surely followed Alice down the rabbit hole.
 
That spark of story-telling inspiration comes each time I allow my silly self to let go of reality and enter into imaginative play with her. Those carefree creative times often ignite a trail of tall tales full of an endless array of colorful characters. One of those new characters is Lucy Goose, the main character who now proudly appears with her sidekick, Duckling, in our new Tiny Tales, a series of four sixty-four page early chapter books, all inspired by my very grand daughter.
 
Charlotte Rose and I like to play in my tree house when she comes for a visit. That’s when the magic happens. She climbs up onto my old desk and sits there playing with my parade of little geese miniatures. They lead her to an assortment of my other collectibles: old kaleidoscopes, magnifying glasses, marbles, slinkys and toys from other times.
 
On one of her visits, Charlotte picked up my tiniest goose figurine and asked, “What’s her name?” I told her that one didn’t have a name. I asked if she would like to name it for me. Without hesitation, her eyes lit up and she said, “Lucy. Lucy Goose!” A new burst of make-believe filled the tree house that morning as little Lucy Goose led us on the first of our many story-telling adventures, adventures we later wrote down for others to read and enjoy, adventures that now appear in our very grand new series of Tiny Tales. And below you will find a poem of mine that appeared in Cricket magazine. I hope you enjoy it as much as Charlotte does.
 

 
Charles Ghigna – Father Goose® lives in a tree house in the middle of Alabama. He is the author of more than 100 award-winning books for children and adults from Random House, Capstone, Disney, Hyperion, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Abrams, Charlesbridge, Orca and other publishers. His poems appear in hundreds of magazines from The New Yorker and Harper’s to Cricket and Highlights.