Off and on, for the past two weeks I have been traveling, visiting schools and conferences and reading from my books. Having done this now for 35 years, I have to ask myself -- do I ever get tired of it?

Truthfully, no.

I love being in the midst of young readers.
I love talking about reading.
I love reading.
I love writing.
I love talking.
I love listening.
I love life.

So my motivation remains strong as the day I signed my first-year teacher's contract for The Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts. The year was 1968 and I earned $5,000.00 as a teacher.

That first year I had a troubled, and troubling, student named Devin. He gave me a lot of grief. He really didn't like me. He turned my second period English class into a tactical teacher-student confrontation each day. My other classes were going OK, but Devin made me ask myself every day why I was teaching, why I wanted to be a teacher. Devin made me want to paint houses for a living.

One day I received a letter in the mail from my grandmother who said her grandson was attending my school. She asked if I would look after him. His name was Devin. That same day, my particular Devin was harassing me in my second period English class, and I did something I've never regretted. I told Devin -- in front of the entire class -- that the reason we were always fighting was because we were related.

It could have gone any way at all. He might have thrown his desk at me. He didn't. Devin sat still as a mouse. At the end of class, he asked me if it were true, that we were related, and if so, how. I said, "My grandmother's name is Stella and she asked me to look after you." Devin's blue eyes filled with tears; he reached out and hugged me. He said, "I love my grandmother." I said, "I do too."

Teachers ask me how I like looking out at an auditorium full of strangers. I tell them -- "There are no strangers. We are all related. Each and every one of us."

I have done two performances in the past two weeks. The first at Tice Elementary School in Tice, Florida. The second at Books and Books in Coral Gables, Florida. Both were fun. And each time I learned something -- well, I always learn something. But at both events I re-discovered the power of mime. Mime is something I learned from my father who, most of the time, was a serious man. But he had his odd, loose moments when he'd break into outrageous, footloose comedy.

My dad used to do a really funny little dance and he'd embarrass my brother and me in public by kicking up his heels and occasionally actually kicking us while walking along beside us. His left foot would come out of nowhere and -- thump -- kick our butts. If he was in a ridiculous mood and we were in town walking on the sidewalk, he might step off the curb so that his left foot was in the gutter and his right foot was on the sidewalk, and he'd hump along foolishly like Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Down deep, my dad man was a big clown and I picked up on his clownishness when I was very young.

As a storyteller I weave my dad into a number of little stories he used to tell and quite often I do his foot kicks and funny facial poses. I like to think he's out there in the audience, seeing me horse around, laughing with or at me, I don't care which. Or maybe, better yet, he's right at my side making faces and walking on air. I know one thing. He'd love to see the kids imitating my actions when I do storytelling. There's always one or two little mimers who give me a reflection of every move I make. Little do they know that their hoofer kicks go back to the days of Vaudeville when my dad was a kid. That's four generations of hijinks. Living history.

A teen reader in Italy who is writing a report on my wife Loretta asked us for a complete biography. Loretta, or Lorry as most of us know her, wrote to her devoted reader saying that her biography and her husband's had sort of intertwined over the past 40 years of marriage, but she resurrected some family facts of her own and sent them off in an email. The teen reader wrote back her appreciation and said Loretta is a famous poet.

Loretta (and Gerald) take any and all felicitations, thank you, thank you. BUT, as Lorry just said to me, "I have never written a poem in my life!"

I reminded her that we have three current editions of one of our books (The Mythology of Dogs) in Italian, and that maybe the reader was a little confused. I also reminded her that I had a reader once who stated that I was a German citizen and worked for the German government and another reader who insisted that I was an American Indian high school teacher living in Orlando, Florida. In fact, I have a Hungarian-English background and we live in Bokeelia, Florida.

Readers -- and people in general -- get the funniest ideas about writers. I once had a conversation with a pizza delivery man that went like this --

Pizza Guy: What do you do for a living?
Me: I'm a writer.
Pizza Guy: Published?

For the record, and for Loretta's admirers, here are some interesting facts. Loretta's family came from North Carolina, traveled from there to Texas, and then settled in northern New Mexico in the 1880s. They lived in an earthen house called a dugout, basically a cave. This was in Questa, New Mexico where they eventually built a ranch house and raised cattle. When they sold their ranch the ownership passed to Mabel Dodge Lujan and she gave the house and property to D.H. Lawrence in exchange for the manuscript of Sons and Lovers. Members of Loretta's family traveled to the Farmington area where the town of Chambers was, and still is, named after them. Emma Chambers, Loretta's great great aunt remembered traveling from Texas to California in a conestoga wagon and meeting friendly Indians along the way.

By the way, although Loretta has never written a poem, she should. Her family history is an unwritten poem. And she -- all by herself -- is a celebrated line of verse.

I was at the Miami Book Fair International for three days this past week. Telling stories. Seeing the unbelievable throngs of people passing between the rows of tents full of books. Being happy. Telling stories. Meeting new friends, seeing some old ones. I read our children's book Three Little Birds which is based on the lyrics of Bob Marley's song.

Bob Marley was born Nesta Robert Marley, February 6, in the Jamaican town of Nine Miles -- Nine Mile is how they say it in Jamaica but it's on the maps as Nine Miles. Anyway, Bob was born there in the hills of sweet St. Ann Parish in the year 1945. Today, so they say, there is not a time during the day when, somewhere in the world at large, someone is not listening to a song by Bob Marley.

Still there are children, young children mostly, who do not know him. Which makes this book written with Cedella, Bob's eldest daughter, all the more important, especially to me. A few years ago when Cedella and I read from our other book The Boy From Nine Miles, she sang Three Little Birds acappella. This time, Cedella wasn't there but my younger daughter Hannah was, and she sang the song very sweetly and the whole audience joined in.

The three little birds, most probably Jamaican doves, visited Bob twice "with messages pure and true." First, the day he was born, the birds came to his windowsill. This was embraced as a sign according to Bob's maternal grandfather Omeriah who said, "I think that a new day is dawning." Later in life while visiting his old home village, Bob saw the three little birds again. They offered him fresh insight and inspiration and he wrote the song that is now one of his most popular.

Don't worry about a thing
cause every little thing gonna be all right

No wonder the song is so beloved. We need to hear those words again and again and again. Check the book, you'll like it. Our daughter Hannah sings it. Our other daughter Mariah created the pictures for the book. I am twice blessed, thrice blessed,knowing Cedella.

You take a big Miami moon and mix it with a small bat boy, a sleeping beauty, a jack sparrow with all the requisite blue eyes and long dreadlocks, a kitty cat who turns into a donkey, a tall man with a small woman grafted to his tummy, an orange-suited convict, a blonde bombshell, a net-stockinged tutu'd punk teen, a little red devil. Am I leaving anybody out? Oh, yeah, me. Add one goofball with shades. Sprinkle Miami moondust and stir with leaf of palm, and you get. . .

Oh, oh. Here come some more monsters. The hugest Frankenstein ever seen, twelve feet tall if he's an inch and right next to him is a fourteen-foot magistrate ghoul with black holes for eyes and chain mail hair cascading over his shoulders. I peek low -- the ghoul guy's on stilts and Frankie's not twelve feet tall, he's ten leagues or chains.

The whole world's on tilt. And there's hands grabbing ankles under tables and someone standing at the door with a stand-up bass playing the old TV theme of Batman as our little bat boy enters the house. There's one bluish-grayish-ickish house with a yard woven to the max with spider webbing. We found this freakhouse by following bloody tracks on the road.

Predator leaps out of an open door and a hundred kids scream muddy murther!

The whole neighborhood's laughing. The moon's got the face of Peter Lorre, and he's laughing, too. I am laughing at everything but especially at my daughter Hannah the kitty who has turned into a clipping clopping donkey. Will the man with the old lady stuck to his chest ever catch bat boy whose pumpkin is so full of goodies he has to sit down and get his breath.

I want to do this again next year. . .