Mom’s Books, Now Available!!!
Monday, August 16th, 2010
I’ve been helping my mom with a huge task… her life’s work is to teach as many kids to read as possible. She wrote 4 books to help them break through.
Mom has taught “little guys” to read for a long time. (She taught early elementary grades in public school for about 25 years.) These books are the result of her work on the students’ behalf. She struggled to learn reading herself, and has been passionate about making it easier for others.
Mom wrote all the stories so that only one new word appears on any page. She found when working in the classroom, some new-reader books would introduce even four new words per page. Many kids can not handle that rate of introduction.
The books have color covers, but the insides are black and white line drawings. One benefit to this, is that the artwork does not distract from the subject matter.
Another benefit is that children can be encouraged to own their books by coloring in the characters. Each character is named by their color, so the child can own the word “Red” by coloring the little Red character throughout the books.
My little sweet friend Isabel received a set of the prototype books about a year ago. One night she sneaked into its storage place, took it in her room and colored in every instance of little Blue. Her favorite color is blue. I love that story!
If you live in Lansing, you can get the books at Everybody Reads bookstore. This is on Lansing’s fine and funky East Side, across from Emil’s Italian restaurant, the same block as Rae’s Yarn Boutique. (It’s about 4 blocks west of Frandor.)
Everybody Reads will be sponsoring a meet-the Author/Illustrator night, with a book signing and talk. The event will be Thursday, September 30, from 6pm-8pm.
I can not stress enough how important it is to communities, to buy from local shops when possible. I find it powerful and humbling to know who actually benefits from my small purchases when I buy from a local shop. Scott Harris runs Everybody Reads. He’s as passionate about reading as my mother. He is wonderfully supportive of local talent. I love to vote with my dollars by supporting him.
Everybody Reads will even ship books to you if you do not live in Lansing. Their phone number is 517/346-9900. They are open until 7 on weeknights without events, and 5pm on weekends.
You can read more about Mom’s story and each individual book, at the With Me Books page on lulu.com
Congratulations, Mom! Your work will benefit the world for generations to come. Nice job.




I was in 10th grade. Our church youth director, Lynn Grimes (now a retired United Methodist minister) was from Detroit. Our town was decidedly low on diversity and not at all like a big city. She decided to take our whole youth group to Toronto. There were 15 kids, Lynn and her husband. We had an amazing time. For me, I found out that there were places not like home, where there was more diversity, more visual stimulation, more everything. It was intoxicating.
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I got a good photo of Sam Corbin behind the stage area. He’s such a pleasant, comfortable person to be with (and a very fine musician, as well). I think you can sense his nature from this image.







(Yes, I’m a bit behind on photos, but these were too fun to skip. It was a grand time, and the Charlotte Performing Arts Center was a great place to sing.)








