Lee A. Lion

This book (the first in a series) is dedicated to those who have gone the distance in promoting children to read. It is to:

teachers who struggled with those like me and had the courage to dictate, demand, and encourage reading

parents who read to their children and with their children and will hopefully apply this book to such

the child who would dare to read, if but for a moment each day, noting words he or she fails to recognize and refusing to shy away in the midst of his/her peers in his/her quest to find answers

my mother, Algia B. Dockery, who, in her own right, was a gifted poet and reader of children stories that put me asleep as well as awakened my spirits to poetry (with rhyme) and the sense of a world of children as seen through animal characters that make the world attractive and inviting to them

those who ventured with my children, encouraged them to read, and honed their reading skills as well as being associates who helped guide my thoughts in ways they perhaps have not conceived or recognized all of which are English teachers I have come to respect.

Special thanks to Mrs. L.M. Davis, Mrs. Margie Grissett, Mrs. Elizabeth Jacobs, Mrs. Sheila C. Powell, and Mrs. Cheryl Bordeaux.