I was very happy to obtain a copy of Green Shawdows/White Whale in excellent condition with library covering on Amazon.com. What was even better was the drawing of a whale that Ray drew on the inside page when I sent the book to him to autograph.

Frank, I, too, have the audio collection that you have. Found it not too long ago at Borders and grabbed it up immediately as it was the only copy they had.

Have any of you seen the video: Ray Bradbury/An American Icon? It is great! You talk about having a collection of all of Ray's works, well I am sure that Ray, of course, does. There is one scene in the video where he says that sometimes he can't sleep and so he goes to his front room and looks at the hard bound copies of his books.

I particularly enjoyed that scene because I had the great fortune to be in the same room, not once, but twice--once in February of 1967[when he gave me three autographed paperpacks, two of which I foolishly lent out never to see them again; the only one I have now is The Vintage Ray Bradbury] and in August of 1996 when I visited Ray with my family.

And say, what about his short story, The Drummer Boy of Shiloh? This, too, was different from his usual written fare, but a very interesting story.

I've done substiute teaching and when I mentioned to an 8th grade English teacher that I had been corresponding with Ray for over 34 years, the next time I subbed for her she arranged it so that I could cover his story which was in the text book. I am not sure of the date for the story. But when I was wondering to myself how I present the story to make it interesting to the students, I came up with the idea of calling Ray, which I did, and interviewing him on my speaker phone as to what was the story behind the story.

I played the tape for each class prior to reading it together. It seemed to be enjoyed by the students and I hope made for a more effective presentation.

[This message has been edited by flyboy (edited 02-01-2002).]

Flyboy-

Wow! What a great story. I'm a student teacher now, and when my 10th grade kids finish their work early, I whip out my copy of 'The Martian Chronicles' and read them a chapter...The positive response from the kids has been excellent, as I hoped.

And yes, I agree that "Ray Bradbury: An American Icon" is a fine production...I picked up a copy of the video from Amazon.com a few months back, and was happy to find such an excellent video documentary available.

Greg