“There once was a small, grey, jellyish creature/with big, blue, rainbow-speckled eyes that/could see everything. And everything,/everywhere was beautiful and important.”
At the beginning of “Nothing is Everything” — a soon to be launched children’s book by Frank Quaglia, formerly of Holden, and Colombian-born artist Nina Rossi — the little creature looks up in wonder at “a fiery-colored flying thing with broad wings, a sharp beak, and a magnificent tail.” The creature says, “You’re really Something!” However, Something mocks the jellybeing. “Hey down there. You’re really Nothing!” it cackles. That certainly makes the creature called Nothing feel like nothing.
Happily, things will change. “The message is you can change the way you feel if you change the way you think. That applies to all of us,” said Quaglia, a writer who grew up in Holden, graduated from Worcester State University and currently is writer-in-residence at the Robert Francis House in Amherst.
‘With endless imagination’
Things changed for Quaglia and Rossi on another level after first coming together to work on the book 10 years ago. Rossi was living in Cali, Colombia, while Quaglia was in the middle of a previous stint as writer-in residence at Robert Francis House. Just over eight months later, they were married…