The Wonderful World of William Joyce

The weather is actually looking and feeling like October, hurray! I love this time of year and always think of some great Halloweens we experienced when our kiddos were ages “trick or treat”.

As we approach the 31st another favorite comes to mind. His name is William Joyce and he is my all time favorite author / illustrator of children’s books. I’m guessing this incredibly talented man and his family are busy getting ready for Halloween as he does every year at his home in Shreveport, Louisiana. The measures Joyce goes to in decorating each year are amazing. Lucky guests!

Back in ’97, while we were stationed at Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa, Japan, I was introduced to the Internet for the first time ever by a fellow first-grade-mom, Marilyn, who showed me how the whole thing worked. Do you remember that discovery?

Well, when you are on an island that is less than 70 miles long and no greater than 20 miles wide, you learn all you can to keep yourself from going island mad!
As I ventured into emailing and surfing the web, Marilyn and I decided to create a website. She created one about her family and I decided to create one about William Joyce. Since there was absolutely nothing on the web about him, I figured this would be a good subject. We worked day and night to complete our sites as if we had some urgent deadline to meet.

Everything I created on The Wonderful World of William Joyce was done from scans. All the images on my site were from me scanning and resizing pages from my own books or articles I may have collected over the years. It was a true labor of love and a simple attempt to stay sane while living so far from home! I completed my site, Marilyn completed hers, and we were on to snorkeling, tide-pooling with the kids, coaching soccer, learning how to roll sushi, etc…

I would peek in on my site now and again just to see if anyone had visited it. After a few years I was surprised to start getting emails from William Joyce fans that found the site thru a search engine. At first, I was able to keep up and reply to posts from all over the country, but after a few years, I simply got busy with other things, and LOST my login details. I eventually emailed someone about eight years ago and requested my password. I was able to catch up on the many guestbook posts, and update my age to 38.

Now, at 46, at least 2 PCs later and elbow deep into running our shop, I have not had luck getting my login information, again. Too many mergers of Yahoo, geocities and such will, most likely, keep me forever 38 years old on my site! If you come across any ‘dead-links’ you’ll know why.

I hope you will take time to, not only read about William Joyce, but also venture into a bookstore or library and enjoy his titles and creative spirit!