What's New?
The NEW book!
My newest Sleeping Bear Press title, S is for Scientists: A Discovery Alphabet, is in the stores!
Author Larry Verstraete tackled the daunting task of illuminating 26 science and discovery concepts: Adapt, Build, Compare and Demonstrate. He introduces us to Archimedes, Jane Goodall, the Wright Brothers and Madame Curie, as well as the discovery of Kevlar, Machu Pichu, and Pluto.
My challenge was to bring these characters and places to life. I really like this book, and I think you will too.
Check out this review-
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5761426/review_of_new_release_childrens_science.html?cat=25
It was a busy and emotional summer . . .
Pat and I were in historic costumes, from Prairie du Chien to Madeline Island, from the Tall Ships in Duluth to the rendezvous at Grand Portage . . . you name it, we were there in costume, interpreting the past and having a great time with our friends!But this year the pleasure we often experience during our time travel was tempered by the passing of several good friends and family members.
I recently said a final farewell to three women - Alice, my childhood librarian, my neighbor Marlene, and my Grandma Geister.
Alice
Alice was the last link to the public library I remember so fondly from my childhood - she was "my librarian". I no doubt embarrassed her more than a few times when I publicly thanked her for instilling in me a love and respect for books. (See What's New #3)
Marlene
Marlene was wheelchair bound almost every day of her 71 years, and the disease that trapped her in that chair also made speech a tremendous struggle - but her smile saved many a day as I walked out of the studio in a blue mood and encountered her on the sidewalk. They tell me she loved listening to Lawrence Welk and she loved to dance in her wheelchair to polka music - I wish I had danced with her.
Grandma
My grandma, Ethel Geister, lived 101 years. She was the eldest of 9 children, and she outlived all but one of them. Three of her own children died in her lifetime, including my father. Grandma lived well beyond my grandpa, many of her friends and neighbors, and in the end, she was tired.She was my tie to the distant past that forever calls to me, and she certainly influenced my love of stories and history.
When Grandma was a little girl, her father packed the family in a home-made covered wagon and, as she put it, they "emmigranted" from Garrison, North Dakota to Amery, Wisconsin. The horses, so used to the vast open sky of the prairie, panicked when they encountered Minnesota's "Big Woods", and Grandma's father had to slowly walk them back and forth for some time to calm them down. That summer she watched the townsfolk at the train depot send their sons to fight in the Great War. She remembered all the tears, and though she sent her share of sons and grandsons off to fight in their own wars, she always hated it. She would tell me that the past was a hard time, and there was nothing easy or simple about it - there was no romancing of the past with her. And yet, she once turned to me and said, "But I would like to visit it again for just a short time - we had fun playing games, and I think people looked out for one another more in those days."
She was the girl in class who was called upon by the teacher to draw pictures on the chalkboard. I remember her drawing little pictures for me when I was a child.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
She was a quiet force of nature, filled with such sweetness and oh, what a laugh - Even now, I can hear that laugh, and I am walking alongside that little girl and her covered wagon as she travels into the big woods, and a life filled with heartache and joy.
I will miss her.
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