Once upon a time, long before the development of Photoshop, Tomie would send his completed illustrations to the publisher and the publisher would return an illustration to Tomie if a correction/adjustment was needed. That was the case when Tomie sent completed work to Holiday House and it was observed that a hand had six fingers in an illustration. After that incident, for decades, I would carefully review his drawings by counting fingers and toes. This “Hello, Tomie” drawing was at the bottom of a note Tomie was going to send to someone in November. I loved it, scanned it before mailing, and used it to surprise him with note cards. The printing process was too far along to pause when I realized the raised hand had six fingers. He told a teacher in elementary school, “I’m not going to be an arithmetic-er.” Nor I, I guess. (Bob)
