Preface 

I started writing this with the express intention of trying to tell myself stories for children.  To do that, of course, I am to reevaluate my childhood, my relationship to my family and how I interacted with things in this tender and sensitive time. Rather than open that can of worms, I wrote these stories instead. 

Writing for children, I think, is the most natural form of storytelling there could ever be because that's exactly how storytelling started in the first place: By the light of flint-sparked fire, painted on gray stone walls,  and spoken in simple words by men and women alike. They tell of how to avoid monsters in the dark, or how to tell the good berries from the bad.  They are comfort. They are safety. And to children, they are truth, no matter how ridiculous they seem.  

So they may be simple. They will certainly strange.  But I believe they should be heard. These are the stories I wished I was told. And so these are the stories I will tell.