Most writers create characters based on themselves and folks they know. And that’s exactly what Hannah Schifrin and I, Woody Weingarten, her granddad, did.
Hannah decided that we’d write about me as Grandpa Graybeard, described in Part One: Mid-Spring of “Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates” as a “gray-haired, gray-bearded sorcerer dude.” The description is accurate, although in real life I’m no wizard and can’t do spells or magic or any of that fantastic stuff.
Like Grampy, I do love munching on burgers.
As for Joe Marciniak’s illustrations that mirror me to some extent, I know they’re fabulous but my actual nose isn’t quite that long, my body’s quite a bit chunkier, and neither my long black robe nor my five others have any stars on them. Also, I don’t own a single scepter or magic wand of any color.
Hannah and her real friend and classmate, Briana, the models for fictional Lily and Penny, respectively, look a little like their colorful likenesses in “Grampy…,” at least insofar as Lily wears braces and Penny is a brown-skinned Latina. But neither, of course, have wings (their school buddies would have noticed, even on Zoom).
As might be expected, Hannah does wish unicorns were tangible (she’s truly an animal lover and lives with, in addition to her mom, two dogs, two cats, four goats and several horses).
Fairyville and Fairyzona aren’t real places, however, but playful concoctions conceived in Hannah’s creative eight-year-old mind.
Regardless of what’s realistic and what’s not, it’s crucial for me to give credit to my young Northern California co-writer — because “Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates” emerged at least 50 percent from her imagination and mouth.
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