Mr.Z , Who is he?
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A teacher, an author, film-maker, rapper….also an award winning copywriter!
Children’s Author Bob Zaslow wants to send out positive messages in all his stories, and as a natural born teacher he actively encourages kids to learn to love and enjoy reading by making content relatable, even turning Shakespeare’s text into rap! He would also like to ‘buy Bill a mead at the Boar’s Head Inn, talk about his plays and say — thank you!’
‘I want to catch them (kids) at an early age, four, Five or Six and instil a love for stories and loving’
‘The Mayfly & the Methuselah tree’ is his latest book to reflect his ethos of love, happiness and kindness. He talks about the book, and Mr.Z narrates it for us in the link below.
What inspired this story?
I was reading a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, ‘So much happiness’, in it she wrote:
‘ But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.’
The same day I read a National Geographic story about an ancient tree in California called the Methuselah tree. It’s a real tree that exists and said to be 4800 years old! I thought, what if the tree was so old that nothing meant anything to him anymore. It was just bored, putting in the time, day after day. But, what if he met someone like the person in this poem, ‘So much happiness’, and I thought, “Who is the shortest lived creature on the planet that meets the longest lived? It would be a mayfly. As far as I know, they live for only one day. So I thought, what if they meet? Would it make any difference?
My message in all these books is to follow your love, follow your joy. Let that joy, that love, or that happiness be your guide to what you do.
My very first book was called ‘The most beautiful snowflake’. It hasn’t been illustrated…
