Dallas Clayton

Dallas Clayton started his career as a teenager writing and illustrating magazines and selling them to strangers. Later, as a new father, he wrote and illustrated An Awesome Book from home simply to encourage the idea of dreaming big and holding on to those dreams. He sold hard copies of the book but he also put it online for free to share it. When the hard copy sales escalated he created the Awesome World Foundation, which donates one book for every copy sold. He has always written from his home, and now runs the foundation from there as well. May his experiences inspire big dreams in your family, too!

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My name is Dallas Clayton. I write kids books. I don’t require much space or many amenities to be happy. I guess I’m lucky like that. To be honest, I would be just as happy living in a van parked next to the ocean as I would in any variety of palatial estate. I’m not much for sprawl or grandeur, or making other people who don’t have any houses feel bad about it because my house has six basketball courts and a television made of diamonds.

But I can recognize that “van” is a pretty lackluster answer to what is my ideal space. Maybe instead of van, I should say craft. Vehicle. Traveling machine.
What does that look like? It’s going to need to be fast, so I can hurry all over the world meeting new friends and getting into new situations. Maybe even “warp speed” fast. You know, near-instant traveling capacities.

And its going to need a lot of room, so that people can come inside and hang out and eat food and play party games, and draw pictures on the walls if they want to. What good is it being able to get Iceland at warp speed if you can’t have a dance party when you get there? And it’s going to need to be able to fly, and go underwater also, because – well, you asked me to use my imagination…

…and while we’re at it, it should probably be able to go into space- maybe to the furthest reaches of space- the parts of space that could answer all sorts of questions about mankind and god and science and whatnot. I would also like it to be painted on the front like a mural at a pediatric dentist’s office (rainbow-colored misshapen animals, wizards, etc).

Oh, and it needs multiple swimming pools for when we travel to desert climates (you’re invited too, you know!) I would also like it if it could play music as it traveled, like an ice cream truck- but less annoying. Maybe it could play something easy on the ears, like Sam Cooke or Bill Withers, man those guys could sing. If only my house could sing as well as Bill Withers, I’d be a happy fella.

I guess since we are on the subject I’d like to make one final request of my ultimate home- if it could end poverty, disease, and global inequality and maybe across the board make people of the world feel better about themselves, well that would be great too. *
Thanks so much!
Love, Dallas!

* They said I could use 600 words. I only used 428 words so far so I would like to use the remaining space to tell you that I love you and that maybe you should call your mom today if you get a chance or maybe if you see someone outside (it’s pretty cold these days) who doesn’t have a house you should try to talk to them or maybe buy them some food or maybe just even a big smile would be nice. I know isn’t much, but at the end of the day we’re all just people, right?