Vermont Authors

We are blessed to live in a state with many amazing authors and a culture that supports that (if only I could get the amazing writer in the house to write a book).  Recently, it has become amazingly apparent to me just how big of a culture it is in our state.  I had to read a Graduation Challenge(our senior project) paper on Vermont and Vermont-inspired authors and it heightened my awareness on the subject.  Along with that, one of the other readers for this particular paper also has several published works himself and went into a whole history lesson as we critiqued the paper we were reading.  While there were moments I zoned him out so I could concentrate on the paper, it became very apparent to me, just how many Vermont or Vermont inspired authors there are.

 

Then  two weeks ago one of Little Man's favorite authors (who also happens to live up the street from us) hosted a "Bob's Birthday Bash" down the street from out house.  Now in the event that you have never heard of Bob, he is a chicken in a story by Tracy Campbell Pearson.  Not only is he a character in her story, we found out that his inspiration came from one of the houses between our house and the birthday bash.  We ran into the farmer on our way to the bash and he told us all about the original Bob.  It was really neat to be able to connect with a book in such a personal way. 

After we had  enjoyed all of the birthday activities such as coloring chickens, signing Bob's card, getting our picture taken with bob, face painting and all the other little activities; we followed Tracy out to the town green.  Hung on all of the trees in the town green were pages of the book.  As the kids ran from page to page (they were numbered) Tracy read them to the kids.  Where else can you do a story walk with the author of the book?  It was a lot of fun and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. 

The only problem I have found with having local authors around you, is that at times the connections are a little too deep.  You see, that same author wrote a book about the local snack bar.  I am pretty sure every kid in town owns this particular book and stalks the local snack bar in the early spring months waiting for its opening day.  Why do I think this you ask?  Because the weekend the snack bar opens, every mother and child in town is standing on the steps of this local establishment.  That, and one of the first words my child learned how to read was the word OPEN without being taught. There are drawbacks to having so many local authors......