MY FRIEND FROM OUTER SPACE: Book Quilt Square

My Friend From Outer Space: Detail of Quilt made by students and parents at Taft Primary School, Taft, California

One of the most treasured souvenirs of my many author visits to schools through the years is the book quilt made for me by the students and parents of Taft Primary School in Taft, California. One of my favorite squares features one of my most popular fiction books at the time, My Friend From Outer Space (Franklin Watts, 1981), a story inspired by the imaginative games of my own children. I love all the comets in the sky and the candy-striped space ship. (A new version of My Friend from Outer Space has just been published on Amazon in a graphic picture book style. Now children can enjoy this story again!)

Taft Primary School

Well in advance of my visit, students had read a variety of my books.  They then chose a topic or scene from one of the books and made their own drawings which were then transferred to fabric by some very hardworking parents and sewn into a quilt.

Scenes from the Winter Olympics

The visit was made almost thirty years ago, around 1985. I can tell because many of the drawings feature events from The Summer Olympics and The Winter Olympics, books that were published at the time of the 1984 Summer Olympics which were held in Los Angeles.

Some of the other quilt squares feature scenes from my book about giant sequoia trees, The Biggest Living Thing, which was illustrated with my own drawings and printed using pre-separated colors. Every time I get out the quilt, I am not only reminded of the books, but of my wonderful visit to Taft Primary and the tremendous love of books and reading promoted throughout the community.

Scene depicting a page in The Biggest Living Thing