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 Letter to Jack Canfield
Co-creator, Chicken Soup for the Soul series
Dear Mr. Canfield,
I have longed enjoyed your books and tapes and count myself among the millions of people whose lives have been touched in such a wonderful way by your work. But I probably never would have taken the time to write unless something remarkable had happened to me, something that I could not help but share with you.
Unless we are clear on what it is we truly want in life, you said, we can never expect to accomplish it. That much is well known, and I’ve heard it from others, too. But then you said something that hit me like a lightning bolt. What makes people really successful is not just clarity, but an unusual level of clarity. And wham! I sat down at my computer and quickly wrote four short paragraphs. Suddenly my future became clear to me. In 200 words, in plain English, I had achieved an almost unbelievable amount of clarity about the future of the written word. Here are the four paragraphs exactly as I wrote them while listening to one of your tapes:
Suppose that it is 2015 and you are in your favorite bookstore, browsing the latest bestsellers. You open book after book — works of fiction, history, biography, mystery, memoir, romance, poetry, etc . — and the colorfully designed pages caress your eyes with their resplendent beauty. There is a new Botticelli of the Book, a new Perugino of the Page, a new Raphael of the Written Word.
You need not stroll along the cobblestone streets of Florence or go back in time, to experience such a Renaissance. This one rests in the palm of your hand — literally inside this book, inside this store, inside a thousand other stores around the world.
The idea is more than just a fantasy or a dream. Beautiful books were the gems of the Middle Ages and in 10 years they will be the gems of our age, too. The best-sellers of the Middle Ages were colorfully designed and in 10 years our best-sellers will be colorfully designed, too.
A deep desire for beauty permeates the air. Already in your hands is one book. It is the first of thousands to come.
Suddenly I could see the future, literally see all of those colorful books in the bookstore, literally see the Renaissance in the palm of my hand! These words have become the foundation of Goodbye Gutenberg: How a Bronx Teacher Defied 500 Years of Tradition and Launched an Astonishing Renaissance. It is “The Big Vision,” as I now call it.
Now I know that this all may seem a bit new or even strange to you. But I invite you to consider that one way of achieving your goal of selling a billion Chicken Soup books, especially to younger readers, is to design them in color. The standard black and white book has a tough time competing in our richly visual age. I really believe it would be worth it to try one of your next books, or even one of your existing books, in color. There are literally millions of possibilities to transform these books into an entirely new multi-sensory experience. You have written beautiful books. Why not make them as visually beautiful as they are inspiring?
As I show in Goodbye Gutenberg, all of the great religions enjoyed a heyday of gorgeous, full color books. Beautiful books were regarded as spiritual pathways to the Divine. But we lost this connection to beauty and the written word after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. Now, with new technologies, we can recapture our divine past and recapture a generation of readers brought up in a colorful, visual, multimedia world.
I am a high school teacher at a public school in the inner city, with no prior training in the arts. I created this book out of a deep felt need not only in the inner city, but in our general culture as well. But I would never even have even embarked on this incredible journey were it not for your stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I would never have believed that such a book is even possible. Now here it is, as real as the sunshine, in the hands of so many wonderful, special people.
Warmly,
Valerie Kirschenbaum
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