My publisher recently made the decision to move the release date of A TIDE from August 5 to October 1, in the middle of the 2022 football season, and also the 61st Anniversary of Alabama's team of 1961–the first of three Alabama National Championships won under the Bryant/Laslie partnership.

Not long after receiving the news, a dear friend, who happens to be a children’s librarian, sent me the picture book How This Book Was Made. I laughed out loud reading about the journey of the writer in the narrative whose travails one reviewer describes as “a quirky exercise in self-reflexiveness." The surreal digressions and visual humor author Barnett and illustrator Rex use to portray the path to publication do hold some nuggets of truth. I hope, though, that A TIDE OF DREAMS print journey to a bookstore/library shelf near you does not include a slow boat across pirate infested seas, one of the many mishaps that befall the writer’s book in How This Book Was Made!