Itty & Bitty's News and Press

Horses inspire local poet’s book

BY JOHN ENGLISH/CONTRIBUTING WRITER

     “Bitty is brave/He stands on the dock. Itty needs shade/And a 40 sun block.”
When Nancy Czerw wrote those lines, she had no idea that her spontaneous stanza about two miniature horses would blossom into a published children’s story and a two-book deal.
     “I write poetry all the time,” said Czerw, a Flower Mound resident. “I write serious poetry, but I also write for fun. I celebrate, as my kids say, anything and everything.
     “If a friend falls off a horse or wins a championship, breaks an arm or whatever, it usually winds up in a silly ditty.”
Czerw, whose influences include Dr. Seuss, A.A. Milne and poet Ogden Nash, said she got the idea for her new book, Itty and Bitty: Two Miniature Horses, when she saw a photograph of Bitty standing on a dock.
     “A poem came to me,” Czerw said. “So I went home and wrote it, and it was very, very short. Then I just started writing, and it just sort of became a series.”
Itty and Bitty’s owner, Johnnie Martin-Carey, said she thinks the books will appeal to children and serve as a good introduction to poetry for young people. The Argyle resident added that the miniature horses’ celebrity status could rise with the book’s publication, but they have always been rather popular.
   “These little minis are so cute, and I have always had people pull over on the side of the road and take pictures of them out there,” Martin-Carey said. “They are very appealing little animals.”
     Czerw will have her first book signing 3 p.m.-6 p.m. Sunday at Martin-Carey’s Steele Away Farm in Argyle.
The Flower Mound poet decided to find her own illustrator for the book, and after contacting five or six people, finally made the phone call to Michigan that would seal the deal.
     “I am expecting this big corporate office, and I dial the phone number on the entry I found on Google.com and a young voice said, ‘Hi, Dana’s Doodles’,” Czerw said. “She and I just hit it off. I sent her the photograph of Bitty on the dock, and she sent a little line drawing, and I wrote her back and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’”
Illustrator Dana Bauer of Dana’s Doodles said she was equally excited about working with Czerw.
     “I was really impressed with the poetry that she had written, so it was easy to work with,” Bauer said. “They are really cute stories with witty rhymes, and I thought that it would definitely appeal to the greater public.”
Czerw’s book can be purchased at www.ittyandbitty.com. The former English teacher welcomes the public to join her for her first book signing.
“Just come in and meet Itty and Bitty and me,” Czerw said. “It will be a lot of fun.”

copyright Alliance Regional Newspapers/Knight Ridder.

It's almost party time here at Steele Away Farm.  Everyone's buzzing around, getting ready for our big literary debut.
     Johnnie's in the kitchen, whipping up some hors d'oeuvres and finger foods.  Yck!  Strange things you folks eat.   Itty and I have put in a request for sugar -- sugar cubes, sugar lumps, sugar cookies.  And on the healthy side, we've asked for CARROT
cake and OATmeal cookies.  It's ok if there's a little sugar in those too!
     I've been helping too, eating the grass around the fence lines at the farm (you call that weed eating), and grazing day and night to keep the pastures trim and mowed.  This is an all consuming job.
    Guess what Itty is doing?  Polishing the brass name plates on our new leather halters! Johnnie bought us new "clothes" for this grand occasion.  Harrumph..... I'd rather just show up in my birthday suit, but she wants us in our Sunday finest.  So...after I roll in the dirt to brush up my coat, and scratch my back, I guess I'll let her put that halter on me. If Itty polishes up those brass plates anymore, I'll have to borrow his sunglasses!
    Hope to see you there!
    Tally-ho!