ANDREW LIVINGSTON, 32

I’m So Embarrassed! (2005)

Munsch had the idea for a book about a boy who dreads his mother’s public displays of affection, within minutes of meeting Andrew Livingston in 2003.

MY MOM WAS MY TEACHER for about four years when I was attending kindergarten and elementary school in my hometown of Latchford, which is just south of Cobalt, Ont. Back then, Robert Munsch had partnered with Zoodles, the animal-shaped canned pasta, to do a story-writing contest. The class that wrote the winning story would get a visit from him at their school. My Grade 4 class won second place in that contest.

For a long time afterwards, my mom kept writing to Robert and asking him to come to our school. My mom is very passionate, and she loves her kids. She just wanted us to meet Robert Munsch. She had her mind set on getting her “Munsch moment,” as she calls it.

A few years later, when I was in Grade 7, my mom wrote and told him the second-place Zoodles kids were about to graduate. She said, “This is your last chance.” She practically gave him an ultimatum. That’s my mom.

He wrote back and agreed to come, which was the weirdest thing to me—I didn’t expect my mom’s constant invitations to work. The closest airport is in North Bay, an hour and a half drive away from us. He flew from his hometown of Guelph to North Bay, and my mom picked him up from the airport. I went too, along with some friends.

My mom saw his plane landing and said, “There he is!” She ran onto the tarmac and helped him get his luggage. I thought, Oh, dear God, stop. I was in Grade 7 so this was still very embarrassing. Robert almost immediately asked me if she did this often. I said, “Yes.”

We got into the car and went to a Tim Hortons. While we were sitting in the booth, he told us the story that became I’m So Embarrassed!, which was based on my mom’s exuberance and my embarrassment at the airport. Within 10 minutes, he had already done the entire story in his head.

In 2005, when I was 14, he called and said, “Do you remember the story I made up about you? Well, we’re going to turn it into a book.” My mom was listening on the other line and she just kept talking. I said, “Let me talk, it’s my book!” She was still embarrassing me, even on the phone.

Anyone who knows me knows I hate being in the spotlight. I had to prepare myself for the attention that would come with having a Robert Munsch book about me published. Now that I’m older, I’ve realized you just have to embrace the embarrassment. The book helped me a lot, and so did my mom.