Former Georgia Governor Nathan Deal holds book signing at Mercer’s Roberts Academy

"She told me that she'd read all the books that she had and she wanted me to write her one. So, I promised her I would and this is the end product of that promise," former Governor Nathan Deal said of his late wife, Sandra Deal.

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Mercer’s Roberts Academy was packed on Monday as former Georgia Governor Nathan Deal held a book signing for his new children’s book, along with its illustrator, Cheryl Riner Hodge.

The former governor, now the author of “Veto, The Governor’s Cat,” says one of the many reasons for writing the book was his late wife, Sandra Deal.

“Her belief was in literacy and the importance of literacy,” he said. “If we do not continue to promote literacy, we’re in danger, quite frankly, with artificial intelligence, with all the technology that comes along trying to eliminate the necessity to have certain basic skills.”

“My wife, as I said, had taken literacy as her project when she was First Lady of Georgia,” Deal said. “And she’d read to over a thousand schools, systems, individual classrooms, rather, we estimate about a quarter of a million Georgia children heard her read a children’s book to them. Even when we got out of office, she was still getting requests to come read, and she told me that she’d read all the books that she had, and she wanted me to write her one. So, I promised her I would, and this is the end product of that promise, and I’m glad that I was able to fulfill it.”

“She was so animated in her reading a book to children that her face was all scrunched up, her hands up in the air, you know,” he said.

Deal says his new book teaches various life lessons.

“It is an effort to teach children lessons through the eyes of Veto the cat, and through the animals and birds that Veto meets,” he said. “They, each one of them, teach him a lesson that we need to learn as a society and as children in particular, need to learn as they are growing up. Things like kindness, the ability to have friends even though they may not look, or act, or be able to do the same things that you can, you can still be friends. And of course, how to deal with loss. Those are just a few of the elements that are involved in the book, and I think sometimes children will listen to animals talking, to a cat and perhaps understand that maybe that applies to them as well.”