John Handiboe, Hey John! What’s Going On?
WINTER PARK -- The first lady of the United States, Laura Bush, and her daughter Jenna swept into Central Florida Friday afternoon.
The mother-daughter duo was on a book tour promoting the children's story they wrote together.
The first lady and Jenna were whisked into the Borders book store in Winter Park, and took no questions from the media. They were here to rub elbows with Central Floridians.
“Jenna was like ‘hi ya'll,’ said Melissa Masin from Longwood.
“I’m still excited,” said Meredith Koonts from Orlando.
Hundreds packed the store book shelf to book shelf. The line stretched outside to the parking lot. Some arrived as early as 5 a.m. to have their copy of “Read All About It!” signed by the duo.
“It was exciting. It was exciting because they saw the babies and we thanked them for continuing the education of our children and hopefully we can read it to them and they can appreciate it when they are a little older. It was very exciting,” said Koonts.
The children are the main focus of the book tour. The first lady and Jenna, both former school teachers, co-wrote the book to encourage children to read.
“My favorite part was when the characters started coming to life,” said Dimitry Vinokurov from Orlando.
“When they find the pig,” said Hannah Murray, also of Orlando.
The kids also found the first family exciting, meeting, greeting and, of course, asking questions.
“My sister asked how many stories there were in the White House,” said Hannah.
“So I asked her and she said ‘there is a deep basement and there are four other stories, so there is five,’” said Sarah Murray, Hannah’s sister.
Well next time you get to talk to her, because I didn't get to talk to her, can you ask her about gas prices?.
“I’ll try if i can,” said Sarah.
It appears the cute kids have an in, but so do the folks from the first lady's hometown.
“Talking about Austin, we lived there for three years. She said how she lived there and she loved it and she wants to go back and i said so do we. We should do it together,” said Masin.
Yes, some folks did get to talk to the first lady and share stories. All 1,000 copies of "Read All About It!" were sold out here at the Borders bookstore. Also, the first lady and Jenna had the book published in Spanish.
Of course, as you can imagine security was tight, but there were no protesters at Friday’s book signing. One heckler was arrested Wednesday after a book signing in New York City.
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