A child's caregivers and experiences can influence them for a lifetime.

You could even call these influences an inspiration.Raised primarily by his maternal grandparents, author Michael E. Glasscock III used his newly published book, Little Joe: A Novel to pay tribute to his grandparents.The book follows the title character as he adapts to life with his grandparents in rural Tennessee during the early 1940s.Fiction mirrors real life, and Little Joe quickly learns that parents and grandparents play different roles in a child's life with different discipline styles and expectations, but the same amount of love."This story is fictitious, but the grandparents in my book were basically my grandparents that helped raise me. They were very important in my life," said Glasscock."It was a constant thing, going back and forth between Texas and Tennessee. But my grandparents were the stable core both for my brother and me," he added.Glasscock noted that had he been raised exclusively by his parents, he likely would have been a very different individual. His grandparents stressed discipline and education, helping him to thrive academically despite being dyslexic."She was very supportive and she tutored me. She set me on a course that I would need to become a successful individual. She was extremely important in my life," he said.Now in his 80s, Glasscock is the proud grandfather of one."He's a wonderful young man, but I don't have the kind of relationship with him that I had with my grandparents," he said, noting that the physical distance between family members Texas and New York means they do not spend much time together."We're such a mobile society, with people spread out all over," said Glasscock. "It's different than it was, certainly."