Julia Richardson believes that every child contains within him or her a miracle. It may be one of the reasons she became a children’s book author. Another reason may be that she struggled with dyslexia as a child. Just learning to read and write, little Julia painstakingly wrote out
her name. Her teacher’s response was not at all what she expected. Yet today her books have won critical acclaim and awards. She is the author of Let’s Build a Little Train, Little Dandelion Seeds the World, and the upcoming Goose Egg Island.
“When I was in first grade, I can still remember my teacher standing over my desk with a puzzled expression looking at my paper,” Richardson says. “I had written my name, and she asked, what’s that say? I replied, so proud, that’s my name, Julia! But instead of praising me, she just looked even more puzzled. Then she said, hm, keep on practicing. It was probably a month later that she took my paper and held it up in front of a mirror. She brought me with her. It was in the classroom bathroom. Then she turned the paper upside down, and she could read what I had written.”
Writing backwards and upside down, Richardson had indeed written her name. A teacher trained in working with dyslexia came to her classroom and helped little Julia correct her writing and learn to read.
“It took several years before I could read,” Richardson says.
That did not hold her back from her love for books, but writing was something that Richardson resisted even into her college years, thinking herself unskilled. She practiced, however, writing plays with her siblings after receiving a gift of marionettes.
“That marionette show became a Christmas tradition,” she says. “As an adult, I started making marionettes and writing plays and putting on shows locally.”
It was after one such show that Richardson received a letter from the mother of a 4-year-old boy with cancer who had passed away shortly after watching the marionette show. She thanked Richardson for bringing her boy joy in his final hours.
Richardson’s career as a children’s author took off with Let’s Build a Little Train, a story about how trains are built, and her second, Little Dandelion Seeds the World, earned the Growing Good Kids Book Award from the American Horticultural Society and the Junior Master Gardener Program.
Richardson continues to visit schools and talk to children about her journey to becoming a writer, overcoming severe dyslexia, and following one’s dream in spite of obstacles.
