Letterman calls ‘Harry and Horsie’ an ‘amazing’ read
The cover of Harry and Horsie, a children’s picture book published today, offers no indication that the real-life Harry is a celebrity, or at least the son of one.
That’s mentioned inside the book, in a short note from “Harry’s Dad,” signed “Dave Letterman,” better known as David.
He writes: “Hello, kids, and get ready for an amazing bedtime adventure.”
The author, Katie Van Camp, 27, is Harry’s former nanny.
She began Harry and Horsie (HarperCollins, $16.99, for ages 3 to 6) as a homemade gift four years ago for Harry, who’s now 5.
It’s a gentle fantasy about a boy, armed with a Super Duper Bubble Blooper, who goes into space to rescue his stuffed horse.
Harry has a real-life stuffed Horsie. Van Camp made up the Bubble Blooper, but says, “Harry, like all kids, loves bubbles.”
The story’s origins go back to a night on Manhattan’s West Side Highway. Van Camp was in a car with Harry, Horsie and Harry’s mother, Regina Lasko (Letterman’s longtime girlfriend who married him in March).
Van Camp, who’s Canadian, recalls that Harry looked at the lights across the Hudson River and asked, “Are those lights or stars?”
That got her thinking. She wrote a short poem about Harry and Horsie that she turned into a “makeshift book” she gave to Harry as a Christmas gift.
His parents encouraged Van Camp to do more with it. She added the bubbles and more of a story. An illustrator, Lincoln Agnew, added “a retro-comic feel.”
The Harry in the book “isn’t the spitting image of the real Harry, but shares his blond hair and dimples.” She says he’s a “quiet little boy who loves to read, but has a sense of humor.”
Van Camp found her job by accident. She was a budding ballerina until a knee injury at 15 “spun me out to other things.” She taught kindergarten in Shanghai for three years. Then a friend “who knew I always wanted to live in New York” forwarded an online ad for a nanny.
Not until after she interviewed with Harry’s mother, “who I loved from the start,” did she realize who Harry’s dad was.
She worked for four years until her visa expired. In 2005, a worker on Letterman’s Montana ranch was charged with planning to kidnap Harry and Van Camp.
She says only, “No one should have to go through that.” The man, Kelly Frank, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
As for Van Camp, she’s in Montreal, writing a second Harry and Horsie adventure.
Categories