hola from Oregon

Alvina is in Oregon for an SCBWI retreat, but she left behind this
teaser from her speech:

So if I am to tell you about my path to publishing, I have to decide
where it all starts. Just as Scout and Jem discuss at the beginning of
To Kill A Mockingbird, I can take a broad look at what started it all,
or a narrower view, so I'll do both. One place where it all starts is
when I was a little girl. My father likes to tell this story to his
friends, especially now that I'm an editor, and to be honest, I don't
remember it at all. He talks about how he used to read books to me
when I was little, and that at one point I asked him, "Daddy, why do
all of the kids in the books have yellow hair?" And he didn't really
have an answer for that except to say, "Well, that's how the author
made them" and he says I said, very emphatically, "Well, when I grow
up, I'm going to change that!"

I asked my father recently if that story was really true, and he swore
that it was. I just think if I had remembered that as I was growing
up, I would have saved myself a lot of time...