About this item
Old Tar Pockets was a greedy old man, always taking things that weren't his. One Halloween, while digging for sweet potatoes in his neighbor's garden, he dug up a huge hairy toe! "Finders, keepers!" he said to himself as he stuffed the toe into his pocket. But also in his pocket was a glob of tar he had stolen, and soon the toe was stuck to the tar and his hand was stuck to the toe! And then that night something big and scary came in search of its missing toe. "Who took my hairy toe?" the creature's voice kept calling, growing louder and louder, closer and closer...
About the Author
It's always difficult to introduce myself, and "What do you do? " is a hard question to answer. I do so many things! I'm a children's author and a poet. But I'm also a lecturer, a teacher, a mother, a grandmother, a retired librarian, an educator, a Kentuckian and a Michigander, as well as someone who is intoxicated by color and 3-d doodling. (I make quilts, do mosaics, and glue together strange things I find, when I'm not writing.)
Where to start? I think the beginning is best, for storytelling was in my family's blood long before I was born. So . . . I was born in Kentucky. And it was fortunate for me that I happened to be born in the mountains where telling "whoppers" and listening to tall tales long into the night is part of the Appalachian heritage. In those dark and scrawny hollers (narrow valleys) I'd cling to my father's tall legs and stare wide-eyed as I listened to the hair-raising tales my relatives told. We are all big talkers in our family. "Yeaaah, buddy!" (This phrase is Kentuckian for "That's the truth!" To say it right, ya gotta drag out that "a" in the first word.) So don't ya doubt it, Kentucky has rightfully claimed a huge hunk of my heart.
Ours was an oral tradition, not bookish. Books were scarce in our home, and therefore highly prized. The tiny library in the elementary school by our house became a second home. That was after my father moved to Michigan to work in the auto factories. Therefore, Michigan gets to lay claim to a piece of my heart as well--for it was there that I went to school, learned to read, played "school" and "library" and then grew up to become a teacher and then a librarian.
As a teacher: I taught high school English in Michigan and creative writing at the community college level. (I still do workshops for writers around the country.) While at the community college, I was also an assistant editor for a nationally distributed literary arts journal.
As a librarian: I spent my first two years as a librarian being a library director in a small town in Michigan. Then I moved to a much larger library and spent almost 24 years as a youth librarian and a storyteller. I've done storytimes in a number of interesting places including hospitals, Safehouse (the local home for abused women and children) , at schools for kids with special needs, at classes for the profoundly deaf, for senior citizens, and on the Bookmobile. Just before retirement, I was the sole children's book selector for a large and very busy library system in a cosmopolitan and diverse community. In 2002 I was awarded the Michigan Library Association's Award of Merit as youth Librarian of the year. It was a blast! What a great time I had being a librarian--I LOVED it!
As a writer: I write at several levels for childr
