Thank You
By Allen A. Raymond, Publisher

It must have been the Royal portable typewriter my parents presented to me as I shuffled off from Buffalo, NY to my new life in Ann Arbor, MI. It captured me as liquor captures an alcoholic.

Whether writing letters to my family, to my girlfriend(s) from high school or to the local college newspaper, I was drunk with the joy of typing words on paper.

I soon realized I was a fish out of water; engineering was not for me. Yes, I graduated as an engineer but my excitement came at the keyboard of my beautiful Royal.

In 1963, 18 years after graduating from Michigan, and with lots of publishing experience (I never used my engineering degree; I just bragged about it), I entered, for the first time, the world of educational publishing in a new job as President of the magazine division of Crowell Collier & Macmillan.

Eight years later, at the urging of Patricia Broderick and the support of my family – thus proving the adage that fools rush in where angels fear to tread – Teaching K-8 was born (it was first called Early Years).

This month's cover says we've been "Inspiring Teachers for 35 Years." I hope that is so and, God knows, we've tried.

We have resisted the temptation to provide you with a quick fix. That's not inspiration, that's a crutch. We're aiming at your gray matter, the cortex that inspires you to be the teacher that you are.

You would not be reading these words, in fact, if you weren't that person, that exceptional teacher. We're not for everyone, but we're certainly for you.

We are reporters, and our mission is to bring you information on what your peers tell you works for them. Over these 35 years, in order to accomplish that mission, we've visited – in person – 137 schools in 43 states. The people we've met are all, like you, missionaries bringing new and wonderful knowledge to the children they teach. And all those kids, we both know, are hungering for the food of life you bring to them each and every day.

Over these 35 years, and on your behalf, we have also visited – in person – 195 authors and illustrators of children's books who, through what they write and what they illustrate, have brought magic into your classroom and into the lives of the kids you teach.

I will never forget those visits – with Beverly Cleary and her husband in California on a Saturday afternoon – with Judy Blume in her New York apartment, where tears flowed as she talked of the children who pour out their hearts in letters to her – and with Newbery and Caldecott medalists and/or honorees Donald Crews, Sharon Creech, Tomie De Paola, Kevin Henkes, Madeleine L'Engle, Anita and Arnold Lobel, Lois Lowry, Patricia McKissack, Walter Dean Myers, Scott O'Dell, Gary Paulsen, Richard Peck, Brian and Andrea Pinkney, Peter Sis, William and Jeanne Steig, Chris Van Allsburg, Jane Yolen and over 150 others.

Thank goodness for that Royal typewriter. Without it we might never have met. My engineering diploma hangs on the wall, but my heart is with you.

Thank you for 35 wonderful years.

Allen Raymond is the Editor/Publisher for Teaching Pre K-8.