Earth Eight Preschool, Okayama, Japan

To the people that are continuing to keep up the legend of Esphyr Slobodkina,

Thank you for receiving this letter!

We are a bilingual preschool in Okayama, Japan called Earth Eight Preschool. As part of the curriculum, we read many picture books, and throughout the years, the children have grown to love English picture books and are very familiar with them. This past month, our theme has been "the post office." Through this theme, we have been playing with the idea of conveying our message through writing in both English and Japanese. The kids have been writing to each other every day and have been role-playing as workers at the post office by selling cards and stamps and "delivering" the letters into individual post boxes (that the kids made out of tissue boxes).

As one of our final projects, the kids agreed on writing a letter to their favorite author. When we were coming up with the ideas, the kids immediately knew what their favorite book was and they were thrilled to write a letter!

Nozomi (5) loves your book, Caps For Sale. When we were writing the letter, we were unsure of whether Ms. Slobodkina was still working as an author, so Nozomi wrote a letter to her. She thinks the book is so funny when the peddler copies the monkeys on the tree. Ms. Slobodkina's artwork and story really entertains my kids every day and I am asked to read the book at least once a week.

It was upsetting for Nozomi to find out that Ms. Slobodkina had passed away, but she was fascinated to know that there were still people that continued to protect her works. Thank you so much for continuing to be an agent for such a magnificent author.

We are still in the early stages of writing but I hope you are able to read her letter and feel her love and admiration!

With much respect,
Mari Ishii
Director of the English program 

P.S. We have included a picture of the author of the letter Nozomi and pictures of post office play.