Who says a purple cow can't fly?

Having put the words together for a children's book for his grandson nearly 20 years ago and sending if off to a few publishers to gauge their interest, Minneota native Robert Borson was told it needed some illustrations to go with it.
"I didn't have the time back then," he explained. "So, I kind of put it off for a while."
When the pandemic hit last year, Borson, who has enjoyed a four-decade career as a writer/editor throughout the U.S, as well as in Sweden and Spain, dusted off the pages and decided to create some illustrations for it.
The end result was his book, entitled "Astra the Flying Cow" was recently published.
When the completed books arrived at his doorstep, Borson said he held his breath before opening the box.
"I wasn't sure if it would be the way I had hoped," he said. "I was very pleased. I was happy how it all turned out."
Borson grew up on a farm 2 1/2 miles west of Minneota and graduated here in 1956. He then graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead in 1960. Borson's sister, Bonnie Hanson, currently lives in Minneota.
The inspiration for Borson's book actually spawned from when he was a child growing up on the family farm.
"I was always fascinated by the cow jumping over the moon in the 'Hey Diddle Diddle' nursery rhyme," said Borson, who currently lives in Santa Fe, NM with his wife, Sue, and their cat, Sam.
While living in Birmingham, Alabama, he began creating a series of phantasmagorical winged sculptures, such as the namesake for his book. Other sculptures he created included the "Newsboy Angel", which is now a part of the art collection at Birmingham's Civil Rights Institute.Also, an accomplished self-taught sculptor, Borson create a wall-mounted sculpture of that theme, featuring a purple-spotted cow with wings, flying over the moon, against a starry backdrop.
"I put a device in it the sculpture so that if you touch the cow's chest, it will 'Moo'," Borson revealed.
Based off that sculpture and the "Hey Diddle Diddle" nursery rhyme, Borson created the story of Astra for his grandson, Ben, 20 years ago. During the pandemic, he began learning Adobe Illustrator so he could illustrate the book.
"I've always fancied myself as a writer, not an illustrator," he said. "I was always using one side of my brain and now I had to use the other side of my brain. It was great fun, though, and totally absorbing."
He created numerous colorful illustrations to go along with the equally colorful characters in his story who help Astra escape captivity from a traveling circus.
"After all the time I've spent with Astra -- sculpting her, writing her story, illustrating her -- Astra is not a fictional character," Borson proclaimed. "In my mind she is as real as any of the cow I knew as a kid."
Astra the Flying Cow is now available on Amazon as either a 64-page paperback or an eBook. It can be seen here: https://tinyurl.com/u8hff6eb.