I attended first and second grade in a logging camp in Oregon. There were two rooms, one for grades 1-4 and the other for grades 5-8. The janitor was an 8th grade girl.

The teacher read us a book called “Sawdust in his Shoes,” about a boy who runs away to join the circus.

Years later, I was teaching school in Portland and took a summer writing class at Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast. The instructor, a woman named Eloise Jarvis McGraw, mentioned that her first book was called “Sawdust in his Shoes.” I was very excited. I loved that book as a kid and here I was, meeting the author. Back in Portland I joined her writers’ group and learned a lot about the craft of writing.

Eloise said that writers were essentially storytellers. She learned to tell stories while babysitting. She’d tell the children one of her stories until they got bored and started to fidget. At that point she would say: “And then, a ghost appeared.” That would always get their attention back on the story, the ghost would disappear and the story continued. She said she knew she was a good storyteller when she no longer needed ghosts.