Destiny

We became acquainted with Nancy Ekholm Burkert when the kids were little. I forget which books we read, but her illustrations, with their vibrant color and painstaking attention to detail, brought the stories to life. Somewhere or other Ernie found and purchased a slim volume entitled The Art of Nancy Ekholm Burkert. It contained not only some of her illustrations of The Scroobious Pip by Edward Lear, and Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, but also a few portraits in the same style. There was a little girl, called Claire, and a small boy whose name was Rand. We have kept the book on the bookcase in the study for over thirty years. I looked at it the other day and admired once again Rand’s image: look at his serious demeanor and the shape of his head.


Surely I was destined to be Theodore’s grandmother.