It started off as a simple idea. Put out a tweet in the form of a short, crisp message to encourage, inspire and humour the then 32,000 students at the University of the Free State whom I had the privilege of leading between 2009 and 2016. One a day, early in the morning. Initially, I had no idea how many students or people in general were reading these habitual tweets until I missed doing one during an overseas flight. An urgent message came via my secretary’s office. A mother called. She reads my tweets to her children every morning before they leave for school. Where was Tuesday’s one? She had nothing to read. I thought that was funny. But I also realized there was an audience out there for these daily postings. After accumulating more than 100 tweets, my publisher suggested we put together a book of them. That is how Letters to my children saw the light of day.