As
a child my parents were told I would never learn to read and write by the doctors
and teachers they consulted. I was diagnosed with severe learning disabilities.
Today I am a writer and run a children's publishing company. Being
learning disabled taught me the value of dreams and how to overcome obstacles.
When I was growing up in the 1970's, children with learning disabilities weren't
called learning disabled. They were called stupid and pushed off to the side.
I know this for a fact because I was one of those children. If my parents hadn't
insisted I could learn to read who knows what path my life might have taken. Ultimately
it was my parents who tipped the balance in my favor. My
father had been a learning disabled child. Instead of getting help, he had listened
to his mother and father argue over which side of the family the disability had
come from. My father decided that not one of his children would go through the
same situation. Mom was sure I could read. Every day I came home from school and
recited all the new swear words written on the wall in the boy's bathroom for
her. For my mother this was enough proof. At night my father and I sat alone at
the kitchen table. He would make me read a passage from a book out-loud. After
I had recited the passage he would make me write the passage down. Soon I discovered
reading was an escape from all the terrible things going on around me. Much
to everyone's astonishment I was suddenly reading 500 page novels at the age of
Nine. Books like The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf and The Chronicles of Narnia were
among my favorites. My
happiest place became the school library. I especially loved one book about movie
monsters. This book was later part of the inspiration for The Boy Under the
Bed. My favorite part of the book featured a picture of Kerwin Mathews dueling
with a skeleton in The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad. From the time I was eight
I was taking the bus alone to the local movie theater. Books and movies have always
been intertwined for me. Both led me to the place which would be my salvation
from a very unhappy life - my imagination. My parents gave me a typewriter once
for Christmas. I remember sitting in front of the type writer and thinking to
myself, "This is my ticket out!" My
parents of course realized I would have to work harder for whatever I wanted.
As a way of instilling a strong work ethic in all of their children, we were carted
off to church on Friday and Saturday evenings to scrub the floors. How I remember
being on my hands and knees, scrubbing those floors with steel wool and turpentine.
"WAX ON! WAX OFF!" Later those lessons gave me the discipline and inner courage
to pursue my dreams even when the powers that be told me I wasn't wanted or appreciated.
I had learned from experience what people said wasn't always the truth. After
all, I had learned to read when they had insisted I would not. Much
later, after college and some years of drifting, I ran into an old friend of mine,
Nicholas Dollak. We decided to work together on a manuscript for a children's
book. Nicholas would do the illustrations and I would write the story. Of course
all the publishing houses turned us down. Being undaunted, Nicholas and I founded
Malibu Books For Children. Neither of us had any money for a printing. Having
learned in life not to let small problems hold me back, Nicholas and I made the
first printing of The Boy Under the Bed by hand with a home computer, three
color copiers, glue, and potato chip clips. Later, when the book began making
its way into stores, we were able to raise the money for a printing. With
Malibu Books For Children I want to share what I imagine. I hope that a child,
some where out in the world, in a position much like the one I was once in, might
read a story of mine and feel inspired enough to walk through the door which was
almost closed on me. Preston
McClear | 
