Welcome back to Conversations with Grace. It's been a while, but I can't think of a better way

to bring back these conversations than with my next guest, Ken Klempa. Ken, we are going to spend

a lot of time discussing these books. I am in love with these books. They are perfect. I am actually

very much right now in my children's book phase because my daughter's 16 months

were always looking for new books.

You get into the habit of reading, they pick one and they just read it over and over again.

So when I saw your books and I was able to get my hands on them, I was so excited.

These are beautiful books, but before we get into it, let's talk a little bit about you.

You're born and raised in Roslindale tell us about that yes my dad was a Boston police

officer I retired as a inspector and my mom was a housewife so we had we had

five kids and she was always there when we came home from school which was great

because my dad worked

16 hours to support five kids. So it was a wonderful experience, great neighborhood. At that time,

we knew all the neighbors. Everybody knew the neighbors and everybody knew the neighbors, kids.

So it was just a wonderful place to grow up. So it sounds like a little slice of Americana, which when we were talking before this, you

said is a huge theme of these books.

And a huge reason that you decided to write these books is to kind of show people the childhood

that you had with the dog and the neighbors and just the family.

And that's an important theme throughout these books.

Yes, that's the important theme throughout these books.

Yes, that's the common theme throughout these three books that are written and others that will come out in the future. So, yeah, the dog, naturally, family, and the neighborhood is the

common theme, yes. I want to talk about the stories here because the three I read, first of all,

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