THE OBSERVATION BOOTH
OP / ED BY ANDREA DIALECT
NINE AND COUNTING
Father’s Day is fast approaching. In that regard, I thought that it would be awesome to dedicate the entire month of June to all those wonderfully amazing men out there. I am blessed to stumble across such Warrior Spirits quite often when waltzing around those Hoodscapes.
Kicking us off is Author Arthur DeBose. I was totally fascinated by his work and his love and dedication to children. Visit Localtalkweekly.com and read this article in its entirety. While you’re at it, check out the archives. Follow me on Facebook and msdialect on Instagram.
Also support all those change agents that grace my frame as subjects. Like, comment and share. Join us and let’s grow out loud together.
Author Arthur DeBose’s Writing Journey
My Mantra: My books motivate, educate and stimulate children of all ages as they learn and grow through different stages, keeping them entertained with poetic words and brightened illustrated pages (www.arthurdebose.com)
My Published Works: I now have eight children’s books published and one book of poetry. The book of poetry was my first book. Why children’s books? First off, I love children.
I truly believe that the beginning is where you gotta catch people. If you do the research, you will find that most of your successful or wayward people – whether that outcome good, bad or indifferent – started in their beginnings.
My goal is to eventually open up a daycare center. As far as the writing goes, in my beginning I also wrote several songs . “Empathy” is my book of songs and poetry -My first book “Empathy Volume One”.
What Inspired My Children’s Books: What inspired me to write children’s books – I mean, who inspired me to write children’s books – was my granddaughter. Initially, sometime in her life, her mother (my daughter) and her father were working, so I was available, so I was spending a lot of time with her. Just loving her.
Although chronologically it’s “Boy Potty,” “Girl Potty” and “Baby Sitter,” “Babysitter” was my first book. It came about because she came over one day when my daughter was getting ready for work. She really didn’t want to stay and she was wailing.
So I started playing with her and saying, “Hey DJ, you come over here every day and you have lots of toys and games to play, but all you ever say ‘I want to go home.’ Which you surely aren’t, because have you forgot your mommy has to go to work? And when you cry when she leaves, it really, really hurts.” I was trying to cheer her up. That’s where it all came from – “CJ Goes to the Baby Sitter.”
After that, we started potty training her. She had a potty at home and she had one at my house, and I started teaching her by talking to her in poetic form. And as I was selling “CJ Goes Potty,” I came across a guy who requested that potty book for his son, so I wrote Ray Jay Gotta Go.
My fourth children’s book is “CJ Goes to School,” which is about a young lady who was going to school but she wasn’t happy about it. It’s hard on children when mommy, daddy, or grandpa and home is all they knew. So that prompted “CJ Goes to School.”
My next book, “CJ New Friend Unity,” is a book that’s against racism. During that time it was around 9/11, and I was at the park and I was inspired by watching those children play with each other and they were really having a great time.
I was wondering at the time why there is so much prejudice in the world. We teach our children hate and racism – we plant that in our children. That’s where “CJ Makes Friends” came from. Next it was “CJ Goes to the Dentist.” That one teaches children how to take care of their teeth.
Unfortunately, the next one was about the school shootings in Georgia, called “Red Alert.” I wanted to encourage kids and inform them about how to respond in such unfortunate circumstances. But it was written like a test – the right approach is important when it comes to these things.
The eighth one is all about bullying – it’s called “Bullin” (I took out the Y). My ultimate goal is to create a series where children can relate no matter what stage they are – up to about thirteen.
Current Projects: Presently I have two projects taking up space in my head. I’m between a rock and a hard place. I’m thinking about backing up, going back to age two or three year olds and do a book about colors, because that’s the age that they are being introduced to color.
The other is called “Growing Pains.” I was inspired by someone at my church while observing the verbal exchange between a mom and her child. My ultimate goal is to create a cartoon series.
My Writing Beginnings: I’ve been writing for 60 years – I have been writing since I was about 5. Little words that rhymed or that I thought rhymed, like “cat” and “that.” I was between four or five, seven or eight when my first official song was “Little Girl Living in a Big Dream World.” I wrote that when I was around thirteen or fourteen. For instance, my granddaughter is writing now. It’s whenever the spirit hits ya.
The song went: “He comes around to see her just about every day, and when he looks into her eyes he only has one thing to say: I love you. Ooh, if that poor girl knows like I do that when he’s not around her, his love isn’t all that true. She’s a little girl, little girl, little girl living in a big dream world.” It goes on like that.
I got the inspiration for that song when I was in the 8th grade. We had a substitute teacher and the sub’s name was Tamy Lester Smith. What I found out about him was that he wrote for the Jackson Five, and the song that he had written was “Life of the Party.” We started talking one day and he inspired me.
After graduating, when I went to high school I took a creative writing course that was also encouraging, and part of that course was to come up with things and write pertaining to whatever the assignments were.
It’s actually funny because during that time there was a guy named Jimmy, and he asked me to write something for him, and I remember writing it. I don’t remember exactly what it was about, but I remember part of it. It was about love – it went something like “Woman, you bring me so much desire, being around you sets me on fire.” Something like that.
Let’s just say I wrote it for him and he turned it in. I remember his teacher one day was in the study hall and I was in the study hall. We started conversing. I told her that I was into writing and stuff like that.
And she says, “It’s ironic that you write poetry because I am grading poetry right now.” She says to me, “I need you to hear this one, it is excellently written.” She begins reading my poem, but she mentions that it’s written by Jimmy. And she wants to send it in. Deep inside I’m dying on the inside because I wrote it for him. I think he got an A on it. I didn’t get paid, I just did it. But there were other people in my class or in school that I did write for – doing term papers and stuff like that – that did pay me. That was my beginnings.
Getting Published: I had a friend in Texas – she had just written a book. Matter of fact, she was the one always telling me, “You are so good. Put it down, you need to write, you need to write a book.” And when she completed her book, it kinda made me realize that this was doable.
She introduced me to her publisher, we started to converse. I told her my ideas for the perfect design and we took it from there, from start to finish. The poetry book was self-published.
My Plaques: My plaques I started before the children’s books. because, as I mentioned, I write songs also. My plaques started during the time when I wrote about love and I put my poems into picture frames around Valentine’s Day. I write from both men and women’s viewpoints. That way If a woman wants to give her man a gift or if a man wants to give a gift to his woman I got them covered.
When I wrote, “Rib” and “Alfa” they took off. “Alfa” – “You’re my man, my big dog, my strength, my alfa is a woman’s gift to a man ” For a man’s lady, I wrote for that woman. “Rib” – she’s his rib, his better half, his partner. At the time I was thinking that I’d make some type of monetary gain, but they took off, people loved them.
Most of my inspiration comes during my sales. “Alfa” and “Rib” was all about a husband and wife. And then I wrote about love itself, after coming across a young lady one day that wasn’t married who wanted to give a plaque to her significant other, so I wrote a piece called “True Love,” which speaks to that connection.
My Message: To anyone out there even if you’re not sure, do it anyway – because win or lose, good, bad or indifferent, if you don’t, you’ll never feel complete. Do not take it personal. Take it all with a grain of salt. If you have a dream, go for it. It’s your dream and only you can fulfill it.
