CONCERNING REJECTIONS

      Getting even the finest book into print can be a long process.  Between the years 1993 to 2004, I submitted to 60 different publishers an activity book called Read Me a Rhyme, Please for pre-school through Grade Two.  Many of the rejection letters spoke warmly of Ernestine Beyer’s talents as a poet and invited me to try them again.  I did this so often that my submissions neared a total of a hundred.  I saw my local post office clerk oftener that I saw my children.  I remembered how Mom used to say she could paper a wall with her rejection slips. 

      In 1928, the poet wrote a discouraged letter to my out-of-town father.          

      "All my poems are coming back and back.  Each time it is like a kick in the stomach.  I know just how Dempsey felt when Tunney pummeled his bad eye!  I wish it didn't affect me that way.  I almost think I'll have to give it up, I get so blue.  I have to lecture myself to  keep going . . . perhaps lecturing should be my vocation.  It is sad to think yourself a skylark and find you are only a mud one!"       

     Oh, how I empathized with my mother 75 years later.  Every time I saw my address on a returned manila envelope --  oof!  It was like a punch in the solar plexus. 

     In December of 2004, I had given up and almost forgotten my quest, when I received a call from Gary Wilson of  Humanics  Learning .  

    “We are going to publish your book,” he announced.   I almost had to grab my desk to keep from falling off my chair.    Read Me a Rhyme, Please appeared in bookstores, schools, and libraries in September, 2006 and  was a runaway success..

      We’ve come a long way, Mom.   Couldn’t have done it without you.   

The following is a letter from a young New Hampshire fan.

Dear Mrs. Malley,  

        My brother and I have read some poems to my sister.  My favorite is Topsy Turvy Town.  It has a lot of imaganation [misspelled  but who cares!]  Thank  you for makeing this book.