Does the picture on the cover look like me? Hard to know

A week ago today my sisters accompanied me to Peach Plains Elementary School in Grand Haven, Michigan—my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I were giving a presentation to Brenda Wittkopp’s fourth-grade class there.

That’s Bryce and me in front of his class.

Since Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound is a picture book, some schools figure the older kids won’t be interested in what we can show them. But guess what? Older kids are as curious about what it’s like to be blind as the younger ones are. That’s especially true when the blind lady doing the presentation is related to someone in their class: my sister Bev’s grandson Bryce is a fourth grader at Peach Plains, and he joined Whitney and me up front to help during the Q&A portion of our presentation (without being able to see, I can’t tell which kids have their hands up). Watching our great-nephew in action made Sister’s Weekend last week even more special. Some of the questions:

• Did you have Whitney when she was a little puppy?
• What day is her birthday?
• Did Hanni die of age?
• I was wondering when you started writing – was it before you were blind, or after?
• How did you meet your illustrator?
• Do you remember colors?
• Why do Seeing Eye dogs wear harnesses instead of just using the leash?
• How long do they have to train the dogs?
• What is your favorite color?
• What type of dog food does she eat, and who helps you find it?
• Do you think your picture on the cover looks like you?
• I think this might be a sort of dumb question, but is there Braille for colors?
• How do you go grocery shopping?
• How do you make your bread?
• What type of dog was Hanni?
• When you write, is there a certain thing that you do?
• On your computer, is there Braille on the keyboard?
• How old is your dog now?
• Do you know how old she is in human years?

“Older than me,” was my answer to that last one, and then two boys came up front after the presentation, each with a question I’d never been asked by a schoolkid before. “What’s your favorite NFL team?” was one of them. My sisters had to explain later that the kids were heading out for recess, and that boy had a Detroit Lions football in his hands. The question from the other boy left me leaving the presentation with a smile: “Can you tell me your bread recipe?” I do know it by heart, I told him, but it would take too long to recite. “How about I send it to Ms. Wittkopp for you?” Which is what I’m going to do right now, after I hit the “publish” button on this blog post.