Welcome to the Guestbook!
I’m always eager to read your comments about my books and stories, so please feel free to pitch in. Here are a few things for you to know:
1) I answer the messages here personally.
2) No message shows up here until I actually answer it to prevent spam and other inappropriate postings. So there will sometimes be a delay before your message posts, especially if I am traveling.
3) Teachers, a gentle request: Please do not have multiple children send me variants of the same message. A group email is much easier to respond to and not such a drain on my time. My thanks in advance for being alert to this.
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Hi there, I hope you don't mind if I call you Bruce. I will admit that this is actually something I didn't expect to find myself doing tonight while browsing the Internet before going to bed, but for some reason I was thinking about some of your books, and I decided to look you up on Wikipedia. It was a fun trip of nostalgia seeing a listing of all of your books, and at the bottom of the page was a link to your official website; I couldn't resist clicking.
And now here I am, writing a message to my favorite author of the past 20 years. In fact, to this day I still consider my favorite book to be Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. That was the first book of yours that I read, and it opened the floodgates to as many of your books as I could find. From Space Brat to Rod Albright to the Book Of series, your writing was a part of my childhood that I will never forget.
The top shelf of my bookshelf contains a section devoted to Bruce Coville, and from time to time I will pull out the hard cover review copy of my favorite book and flip to the title page to read, "May your heart take wing!", signed by Bruce Coville. That was a gift from my parents about 18 years ago, I think. So it was definitely a team effort by you and my parents to foster my passion for reading.
I suppose everything I've typed up to this point has been somewhat of an ice-breaker. I really want to share a quick story about something I never did and wish I had done. See, I grew up in Ontario, NY, which is roughly an hour from Syracuse. From time to time while I was growing up, I would ask my parents if we could go visit you so I could meet the man that was responsible for all of the magical words I was reading in all of these books. Of course they would always say something along the lines of a 'maybe', and I would leave it at that. Now I'm 26, and I'm off working in our nation's capital, having given up my dream of going to visit someone I've always wished to visit.
This random thought that inspired me to come to this site and write this message is a roundabout way of getting to interact with someone who has absently been a part of my life for roughly 20 years, and I know it's been a long read, but this is my way of saying thank you. Thanks for all of the great stories, thanks for helping to expand my imagination, and thanks for providing me with a way to introduce my children to reading (when I have them some day!)
...And I agree with one thing that you wrote, which I still tell people from time to time whenever it comes up: I think a proper way to describe a group of unicorns is a glory.
-Alex
And now here I am, writing a message to my favorite author of the past 20 years. In fact, to this day I still consider my favorite book to be Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher. That was the first book of yours that I read, and it opened the floodgates to as many of your books as I could find. From Space Brat to Rod Albright to the Book Of series, your writing was a part of my childhood that I will never forget.
The top shelf of my bookshelf contains a section devoted to Bruce Coville, and from time to time I will pull out the hard cover review copy of my favorite book and flip to the title page to read, "May your heart take wing!", signed by Bruce Coville. That was a gift from my parents about 18 years ago, I think. So it was definitely a team effort by you and my parents to foster my passion for reading.
I suppose everything I've typed up to this point has been somewhat of an ice-breaker. I really want to share a quick story about something I never did and wish I had done. See, I grew up in Ontario, NY, which is roughly an hour from Syracuse. From time to time while I was growing up, I would ask my parents if we could go visit you so I could meet the man that was responsible for all of the magical words I was reading in all of these books. Of course they would always say something along the lines of a 'maybe', and I would leave it at that. Now I'm 26, and I'm off working in our nation's capital, having given up my dream of going to visit someone I've always wished to visit.
This random thought that inspired me to come to this site and write this message is a roundabout way of getting to interact with someone who has absently been a part of my life for roughly 20 years, and I know it's been a long read, but this is my way of saying thank you. Thanks for all of the great stories, thanks for helping to expand my imagination, and thanks for providing me with a way to introduce my children to reading (when I have them some day!)
...And I agree with one thing that you wrote, which I still tell people from time to time whenever it comes up: I think a proper way to describe a group of unicorns is a glory.
-Alex
Reply by Bruce Coville
Hi, Alex -
Let's see - it's just going on two years since you sent this wonderful message, and here I am, finally getting around to answering.
Like the tortoise in the fable, I may be slow, but I'm sure!
I do hope this will get to you; you should get a notification if your email hasn't changed.
Well, that's just preliminary. Mostly I just wanted to let you know how much this message delighted me. I love knowing that JEREMY THATCHER continues to mean so much to you. (It's my own opinion that this is the book of mine that is mostly likely to still be around 25 years after I'm pushing up daisies!)
Thanks, too, for endorsing my notion that the term for a group of unicorns should be a glory! I was always hoping that would enter common usage . . .
Cheers and regrets for being so tardy,
BC
Let's see - it's just going on two years since you sent this wonderful message, and here I am, finally getting around to answering.
Like the tortoise in the fable, I may be slow, but I'm sure!
I do hope this will get to you; you should get a notification if your email hasn't changed.
Well, that's just preliminary. Mostly I just wanted to let you know how much this message delighted me. I love knowing that JEREMY THATCHER continues to mean so much to you. (It's my own opinion that this is the book of mine that is mostly likely to still be around 25 years after I'm pushing up daisies!)
Thanks, too, for endorsing my notion that the term for a group of unicorns should be a glory! I was always hoping that would enter common usage . . .
Cheers and regrets for being so tardy,
BC