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[upbeat music]
- Hello, crochet friends!
Hi, crochet friends, it's Jonah,
and I have some really amazing news to share with you today.
My name is Jonah Larsen, and I live in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
I'm 11 years old,
and I love to crochet.
[acoustic guitar music]
So here is my first ever crochet project.
It's a dishcloth that I made when I was five years old.
After finding a bag of leftover crafts,
I just saw this hook,
and the shine caught my five-year-old eye,
and after that, I just fell in love with crochet
and now I have that dish cloth I made on my very first day,
and the hook that started it all.
[funky bass music]
- It got around to family, of course,
and neighbors got to see his work,
and one of our neighbors, she came to me and she said,
"You know, the fair's right around the corner,
why don't you enter some of his items?"
He was six years old,
so he had to go up against the grandmas
at age six.
He won many, many ribbons,
and right now, he's probably at about 100,
and actually won Best of Show this year.
- Our local paper, the La Crosse Tribune
put out an article about my crochet,
and then it kept going to bigger news stations
and TV stations, and papers,
and online articles,
all sorts of things.
- And we have Jonah Larsen here with his mom, Jennifer.
Good morning to both of you guys!
- Jonah: Good morning to you, too.
- Jennifer: He loves to be on TV.
He loves to entertain.
- I'm thinking maybe, like, some sort of book.
- Jennifer: He likes to teach.
- Let's use this granny stitch, which is double crochet.
- He's going to be speaking at the Ethiopian embassy,
so he has so many different platforms.
- Hi, crochet friends, it's me, Jonah,
and I have some really exciting news
in the publishing world, and that is,
the book cover revealing.
Here it goes.
I don't remember Ethiopia.
I can't see my birth mother's face.
I have no memory of the orphanage
that took me in as a baby.
- Jennifer Larson: We didn't know a lot about him.
We knew that he had been abandoned,
that he was ill,
and that he needed a family.
- Here's a picture of me with my mom and dad
heading on a plane for Wisconsin.
- Jennifer: We got him home and we took him immediately
to our hospital, and within days,
it just seemed like he was thriving.
- Jonah: Here's a picture of me
meeting my older brother, Leif,
for the first time.
He was around four or five at the time,
following him around everywhere
as soon as I could walk.
- Jennifer: Jonah has always been a rambunctious child,
a curious child,
and a smart child.
- Jonah: As I got older, school and classroom work
were kind of boring for me, and I didn't really like
to follow rules.
- I got called, my husband got called,
a good two to three times a week to come pick Jonah up,
and it was very, very difficult and challenging.
We had everybody trying to help.
- I was doing things that I was not supposed to be
after I finished my work,
and then, my fifth-grade teacher knew I crocheted,
and she said I could bring it into the classroom,
and then, work on it after I finished my assignment.
- Jennifer: We were a little reluctant.
His older brother, Leif, in only a protective way,
cautioned him that he might be bullied
if he brought that to school.
Thankfully, that didn't happen, and Jonah marched in there
with his yarn and his hook.
- Jonah: I didn't feel jumpy or jittery.
I didn't feel like I needed to do something to get attention.
- We never got called again, ever,
since that day he brought the crochet to school.
[peaceful music]
- I remember the day when my husband looked at me
and we had this thought, "You know,
"we have one more room in the house
that doesn't have anybody in it,"
and so we said, "Let's go back and do it again."
Within a year, we went back,
and we brought home a little girl,
and her name's Mercy.
I do think Jonah and Mercy have a special bond
because they are from the same tribe.
So it's fascinating how each journey
takes us to another and another.
- Jonah: Sometimes, I do think about
what my life would have been like
if I didn't ever find that crochet hook,
but basically, it's just wonderful,
and I love to crochet and design.
- So, we have people from all over the world
following him and telling us what a difference
that crochet has made in their lives,
even if they don't crochet
because it brings them joy.
The message of,
"Do what makes you happy, no matter what."
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