Oceanside poet still stirs up creativity at 82 with new children’s books

Sandra Glassman has not shown any signs of slowing down as a creative writer, even though she modestly said she doesn’t know where her inspiration comes from.

Just take a look at the walls of the 82-year-old’s Oceanside basement, den and another spare room on the first floor of her house, which are all covered with writing awards and framed versions of poems she has penned.

Glassman has written several books of poetry, as well as children’s books. Her latest endeavor is a revamping of a children’s book she first wrote in the 1990s, “The Sloppy Floppy Tales of Charlie the Elephant.”

Avery Brown, who markets Glassman’s poetry books to her publisher, Brilliant Books Literary, asked Glassman if she had ever written anything for children. Glassman told Brown about Charlie, and the idea to update it was born. Retaining the original first chapter, Glassman rewrote the rest of the book. The original book was a series of Charlie’s adventures. In the newer version, Glassman added siblings for Charlie and worked with the illustrator to make the new characters silly and humorous.

“In the previous version of the book, Charlie was just an elephant who got into trouble,” Glassman said. “Now, he has siblings and parents. When the illustrator showed me pictures of the family, I said, ‘Could you put some jewelry on the sisters of Charlie, because they have big ears?’ And she put it on.”

In addition to her writing prowess, Glassman is also a piano teacher and composer. When she was a child growing up in Brooklyn, she would stop into her neighbor’s apartment to pick up her friend, Gail Koenig, so they could walk to school together. While waiting for Koenig to get ready, Glassman would sit at her piano and improvise songs she had heard on the radio.

She did not take piano lessons and didn’t read music, but her natural ability convinced her parents that she should own her own piano when she got older. When Glassman was 11, two of her uncles provided her with a second-hand upright piano.

She eventually enrolled in piano lessons but went against the teachers’ demands that she had to play what was noted on the music rather than her own interpretation of the pieces.

At 18, Glassman married her husband, Stewart, and her energy was diverted to raising her family. She never held a job outside the home, but instead has given piano lessons in her home and still instructs six students ranging in age from five to 15. She said she loves working with children and makes sure her basement, where she gives the lessons, is full of toys to make the children eager to arrive for their lessons.

Glassman had never written any music or poetry, but when her son moved out, it “triggered something,” she said.

“The loss of him being here, we were very close,” she said. “So I started to put music to things and sit at the piano, and all the stuff that came out of that, it was like it’s always been here.”

Among her various awards and framed poems is a framed copy of music Glassman was asked to compose as a part of a memoir by author Jacqueline Wolf. Wolf was a holocaust survivor who, at the age of 14, was responsible for not only her own survival but also that of her four-year-old sister, after the Gestapo arrested their parents.

Wolf then wrote a book, “Take Care of Josette,” about the experience. When a screenplay was written for the book, a mutual friend asked Glassman if she could compose the music for it. This blossomed into a close friendship with Wolf, who felt that Glassman’s composition captured the emotion of the story even better than words alone.

Glassman will write a poem on just about any topic but prefers to keep things light, she said. When asked what inspired her, she said, “It’s how I feel about life, how I feel about nature, music. I love music.”