Owen County History Book Sale

Just in time for the Holidays the Owen County Historical and Genealogical Society has placed the 1884 and 1994 History of Owen County books on sale now through the end of December. The 1884 History of Owen County, regularly $35.00 is now on sale for $30.00. The 1994 History of Owen County, regularly $45.00, is currently on sale for $40.00. Buy both volumes for $65.00 and save $15.00 off of the regular price. Books are available for purchase in the Genealogy Department of the Owen County Public Library. Cash, checks and money orders accepted. Checks and money orders should be made payable to OCHGS.

November is National Diabetes Month

By Amy Morgan

As someone who has had Type 1 Diabetes for over 21 years, I thought I should mention that November is National Diabetes Month. This is a campaign sponsored by the American Diabetes Association, The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and several other groups to raise awareness about the condition. 

Though some people may not know it, there are actually multiple types of Diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association’s website, “every 17 seconds, someone is diagnosed with Diabetes,” and there are approximately “26 million children and adults living around the world with Diabetes.”

While many people have Diabetes, there are different types of the condition, each of which is very different and require their own treatments. If you would like to learn more, you can stop by the library to check out our collection of Diabetes books, or go on the web. Three of my favorite websites include www.diabetes.org, which is the official website of the American Diabetes Association; www.jdrf.org, the official page for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; and www.sixuntilme.com, which is a blog by Kerri Morrone Sparling, who not only grew up with Type 1 Diabetes, but is also a freelance writer and Diabetes Advocate. 

If you would like to know more, feel free to ask. I am by no means a professional, but I can share my experiences.

Local Players on the House of David Basketball Team

            Last week we learned what happened to the religious organization, House of David. Today we will find out what happened to the three young men from Spencer, Ollie troth, Red Johnson and Wayne Payton, who played on the House of David barnstorming basketball team.

            We first find mention of Red Johnson, whose given name was Floyd, in a 1932 newspaper article headlined Shot By Father. The story reads:

            Floyd (Red) Johnson was accidentally shot Monday by his father, Otis Johnson, while hunting southwest of Spencer. The two were about 75 feet apart and two of the shot penetrated the body, one entering just above the heart and the other in one hip. The doctor probed for the shot in the breast but failed to locate it. Young Johnson was up town Monday night, still very nervous from the shock. 

            The next and last mention we find of Red Johnson is in his father’s 1948 obituary where he is listed as living in Clinton, Illinois.

            Oliver “Ollie” Jerome Troth died in Jasper, Indiana on December 12, 2009. He was born November 7, 1921 and graduated from Spencer High School where he was a member of the Indiana All-Star basketball team which beat Kentucky in 1940. He must have joined the House of David basketball team shortly thereafter because he served as a Marine during World War II.

            In 1945 Ollie Troth married Mary Jane Corson and went to work at the Joy Manufacturing Company in Michigan City, Indiana which manufactured various types of mining equipment. Ollie retired from Joy Manufacturing, which has since closed its Michigan City plant. In 1994, private developers took over the 600,000 square foot property, located in a residential neighborhood. The developers invested over $5 million in the facility and recruited six companies that employed 600 people before it was sold. Today the largest employer in Michigan City is the Blue Chip Hotel and Casino.

            After retirement, Ollie and Mary Troth became Florida snowbirds before moving to Jasper in 2008 to be near his daughter, Jayne, and her family.

            Wayne Payton’s story is the one we know the most about.

            Wayne Payton had been a standout player for the Spencer High School “Cops.” He was a member of the 1939 Indiana All-Stars team that beat Kentucky that year; Kentucky being the arch-nemesis to Hoosiers everywhere.

            After graduation Wayne worked at the Collier Brothers Creamery and the Bell Telephone Company before hooking up with the House of David basketball team.

            He couldn’t have played with them long. On December 7, 1941, Wayne was in Spencer with another local boy, Robert “LeRoy” Long who played semi-pro basketball with the Delco Brake Company of Dayton, Ohio, when they heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. They decided to enlist.

            Wayne Payton was twenty-one years old when he traveled to Indianapolis and enlisted at Fort Benjamin Harrison on January 28, 1942. After basic training at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, Fort Benning, Georgia and Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, Wayne Payton was assigned to the 1^st Infantry Division as part of the anti-tank regiment. He landed in England in August, 1942 as part of the first large convoy of American soldiers to land overseas. From there he was ordered to North Africa to fight in the Battle of Tunisia.

            On August 27, 1943, Wayne Payton’s parents received a telegram from the “Commanding General of the North African area” that Wayne had been missing in action since July 11^th. The Payton’s worry was alleviated somewhat when they received a telegram August 31^st from a Miss Mary Jane Royer who reported that she had heard word from LeRoy Johnson that Wayne was alright and for her to “keep her chin up.” Unfortunately LeRoy Johnson was mistaken.

            On Tuesday, September 14, 1943, Mr. and Mrs. Payton received another telegram. This one informed them that their son had been killed in action on July 11, 1943 while serving in North Africa.

            Robert “LeRoy” Long also ended up being reported as missing in action but was found gravely injured with gunshot wounds, “from one side of his body to the other.”

            “They had big, long wooden prongs that ran right through where that shrapnel went through,” Long recalled, “They made a tunnel. The only way to clean it out was to put some sulphur on it and jam it through.”

            In recalling hearing that fateful announcement with his friend Wayne Payton back in Spencer on December 7, 1941 Long reminisces in an interview given to the Spencer Evening World, “Little did we realize what this tragic news would mean to our lives.”

~ Laura Wilkerson
   Genealogy Department; OCPL 

Revisiting the House of David

In organizing the School Folders in the Information Files recently I came across an intriguing photograph of a House of David barnstorming basketball team. The photo dates from approximately 1940 and shows five muscular young men in tank tops and short shorts. Three are bearded and three are from Spencer. All of them are originally from Indiana. The five men were a Mr. Jefferies of Lyons, Indiana, first name unrecorded; Dutch Leonard of Bloomington and the three men from Spencer; Ollie Troth, Red Johnson and Wayne Payton.

            The House of David Commune was famous in its day. It was founded by Benjamin Franklin Purnell and his wife Mary in Benton Harbor, Michigan in March, 1903. Benjamin Purnell had been born in March 27, 1861 in Esculapia, Kentucky. He was the seventh of nine children born to farmers Madison and Sarah Purnell. Benjamin learned to read from the New Testament and when a tent preacher passed through town Madison invited him home so little Benjamin could preach for him.

            Benjamin Purnell loved to preach and became a child evangelist, travelling across the country delivering sermons. At the age of sixteen Benjamin married Angeline Brown in Virginia. The couple settled in Richmond, Indiana where Benjamin found work as a broom maker. The marriage did not last and by the time Benjamin was nineteen he was back in the road and unattached.

            It was in Aberdeen, Ohio where he met and married Mary Stallard on August 29, 1880. They had two children together.  In 1888 they learned from a group of preachers about a man said to be the Sixth Messenger, James Jershom Jezreel. Jezreel had written a trilogy known as the Extracts of the Flying Roll which prophesized that Eden would be restored and the 144,000 children of Israel would gather in a new Eden in America. Michigan to be exact. Jezreel wrote, “O blessed Michigan, for out of thee shall come a star.”

            Jezreel was following in the footsteps of the First Messenger, Joanna Southcott of Devonshire, England. Born in 1750, Southcott had received “communications of the spirit” in 1792 and pronounced herself the woman spoken of in Revelations, “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.”

            Over the next twelve years Joanne Southcott received revelations that foretold Christ’s return to Earth, the restoration of the Garden of Eden and eternal life for God’s 144,000 elect. At the height of her popularity Southcott attracted over 150,000 follows but in 1814 the 64-year-old virgin announced she was pregnant with the prophesied child, the new Messiah, Shiloh of Genesis, who would rule with the iron scepter. Her due date of October 14, 1814 came and went with no child and it was announced Southcott had fallen into a “trance.” On December 26^th or 27^th, 1814, Joanna Southcott died though her believers lived on.

            In the mid-1880s the Fifth Messenger, John Wroe, instituted Mosaic law and also a custom known as the “Cleansing of the Blood” where the Messenger had the responsibility of de-flowering every female member of the religion before their marriages. When word of this ritual leaked out in Britain they were chased off that island and disbursed to Australia, Canada and the United States.

            By 1890 the largest group of Southcottians was based at the Flying Rolls colony Detroit Michigan led by Michael Mills who proclaimed he was the Seventh Messenger, the Sixth being recognized as James Zerell who had collected all the prophecies of the previous five Messengers into one volume known as the Flying Roll. It was here that Benjamin and Mary Parnell travelled in 1895. The Southcottians of Detroit gave all of their worldly goods to Michael Mills and lived communally in “God’s House” on the grounds of the Colony. In 1894 Michael Mills had a vision that from that point forward that all the wives were to be shared communally with all of the men of the Colony. This was too much for Benjamin Parnell who encouraged Mills’ outraged wife to file for divorce. The resulting scandal ended with Michael Mills barely escaping a lynch mob and in Michigan filing morals charges against him leading to a five year prison term for the former prophet.

            During this period of turmoil Benjamin Purnell announced that he had received a Revelation that Michael Mills was a fraud and, in fact, he, Benjamin Purnell, was the true Seventh Messenger. He and Mary were run out of Detroit by Southcottians still loyal to Michael Mills and spent the next several years as itinerant preachers.

            In 1902, while the Purnell’s were in Fostoria, Ohio, their daughter Hettie was killed in an explosion of a fireworks factory during her first day at work there. She had just turned sixteen. The explosion leveled the factory and killed everyone inside. Hettie was so badly burned that she was only able to be identified by the ring given to her by a friend for her birthday less than two weeks before. The actions of Benjamin and Mary Purnell caused outrage in some segments of the Fostoria population because they did not believe in death and so refused to bury their daughter but upon leaving the place three weeks later they published a notice in the local newspaper thanking everyone for, “the kindness, gifts and support,” shown to them by the Citizens of Fostoria.

            Benjamin and Mary then moved along with five followers to Benton Harbor, Michigan which reported came to Mary in a dream. Once in Benton Harbor they incorporated the Israelite House of David. A wealthy supporter donated land to the group and they soon hooked up with about 200 members of the ‘Flying Rollers’ who had become disenchanted with Michael Mills and the Detroit group. Most of the Purnell’s original followers were from Indiana and Ohio but their ranks expanded dramatically after Benjamin Purnell made a recruiting trip to Australia in 1904-05 among the followers of Messenger James Jezreel.

            From here the House of David prospered. It was a communal society and all of its members assigned all their worldly possessions to Benjamin Purnell who added vegetarianism and celibacy to the list of religious requirements. The House of David built three impressive buildings, one of which, Shiloh, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They generated their own electricity and ran their own printing press. They purchased Michigan’s 3,400 acre High Island where they grew fruits and vegetables they later sold at their fruit and vegetable market which was said to be the largest in the world; as was their state-of-the-art cold storage facility. They opened their own amusement park complete with a miniature railroad along with hotels and vegetarian restaurants. In 1912 they published a vegetarian cookbook. They had a zoo, mineral springs and botanical gardens on their 1,000 acre property. They built an auditorium where Biblical plays were performed. They ran a shipping line and cruise ships, patenting the first cross propeller technology making it harder for waves to tip over cruise ships. They invested in logging. They invented a synthetic stone known as Hydro-stone and the Waffle cone. The invented the automatic pinsetter for use in bowling alleys. At the behest of Welch’s Grape Juice Company they invented a way that grape juice could be stored in cans and in the 1970s their cold storage facility was instrumental in inventing dehydrated Space Meals for use by astronauts. They invented a portable lighting system that allowed sports teams to play outside at night. They sponsored two orchestras and three brass bands that traveled the country playing instruments manufactured at the Colony and they were famous for their semi-pro baseball that barnstormed the country and, to a lesser extent, their basketball teams. Players on these teams were not required to be members of the religion.

            Prospering, the House of David was estimated to be worth over $10 million dollars by the 1920s. Despite the vows of celibacy, the House of David was scrutinized by the police on the look-out for immoral practices. Benjamin Purnell was arrested on morals charges in 1910, 1914, 1920 and 1922. In 1923, the Detroit Free Press published a sensational expose of the sect prompting the State’s Attorney General to Act. The Colony was raided but Benjamin wasn’t found. It was assumed he had fled to Canada but in 1926 a disaffected member, Bessie Daniels, went to the police and reported Benjamin Purnell had been hiding in plain sight. He was arrested in his bedroom at the Colony and 13 women swore under oath that they had sexual relations with the Messenger when they were still minors. Benjamin Purnell was placed on trial and convicted of fraud but died on November 16, 1927 before the charges of sexual impropriety could be heard in Court.

            After Benjamin’s death the House of David split into two factions with about 200 members supporting Judge Harry Thomas Dewhirst, a one-time jurist from California, and Benjamin’s widow, Mary, who soon proclaimed herself “Co-Seventh Messenger.” They managed to reach a settlement with Mary receiving $60,000 and Dewhirst’s faction retaining Shiloh and the rest of the House of David’s assets. Mary bought land directly across the street, naming it the Israelite House of David, or, more simply, Mary’s City of David. Both Houses maintained baseball teams but the Dewhirst team disbanded in the 1930s while the Israelite House of David’s teams played well into the 1950s.

            Mary Purnell died August 19, 1953 at the age of 90. After her death her grandson, Samuel Coy Purnell, sued, claiming Mary owned all the assets of the City of David. A judge ruled that the assets were held communally but still awarded Samuel $700,000 as Mary’s share.

            For a while things still prospered. The House of David added a cannery and a couple of Olds dealerships to its holdings and Mary Purnell built a vacation complex called Paradise Park that attracted so many Jewish visitors that a Synagogue was built on-site.  However, celibacy took its toll. Numbers dwindled and the House of David stopped actively recruiting new members after Benjamin’s death. The zoo disbanded in the 1940s with the animals sent to Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. The industries and amusement park closed by the 1970s and by 2010 only three members remained living, supported in nursing homes by the profits from the House of David’s real estate holdings and the money raised from selling blueberries. Traveling down East Briton Road in Benton Harbor today there is barely a trace of the thriving commune. The tourist courts, the vegetarian restaurant, the athletic fields, the beer garden, the Synagogue, all gone though a museum dedicated to the House of David was opened in Benton Harbor in 1997.

            All may not be lost, however. Mary Purnell prophesized that the gathering of 144,000 elect, 12,000 from each of the Tribes of Israel, would happen when people drive by and say, “Look, there’s where the House of David used to be,” and when the number of members remaining could fit into her closet. It looks like that time might be at hand.

~ Laura Wilkerson
    Genealogy Department

Shared Reads: True Crime: An American Anthology

True Crime: An American Anthology (Library of America, 2008) is a magnificent achievement and a revelatory read. Editor Harold Schechter, noted for his own contributions to the literature of true crime, displays a deft hand and remarkable depth of knowledge in assembling a panorama of American crime writing dating back to the 1630 hanging of pilgrim John Billington as reported by William Bradford through the trials of the Menendez brothers and the impact on real estate as interpreted by Dominick Dunne.

Throughout, Schechter presents us with amazing writing from authors famous, forgotten and anonymous. We have a remarkable, rare, account of true crime reporting by Benjamin Franklin in a case as fresh and relevant today as it was in 1734. We accompany Nathaniel Hawthorne as he visits a wax museum, “consisting almost wholly of murderers and their victims,” that will stay with the Reader long after the book is finished. We find Abraham Lincoln relating the case of Archibald Fisher's alleged murder and the man Lincoln defended up until the trial's improbable denouement.

             We encounter Cotton Mather's deliciously plummy account of infanticide in early New England and Ambrose Bierce's survey of Crime in post-Civil War California. The Table of Contents read like a Who's Who of Master Wordsmiths: Mark Twain relating the state of lawlessness in the Old West, Frank Norris observes the capture of a fugitive on the docks of New York City, Edmund Pearson on the 'Bloody Benders' of Kansas, Damon Runyan's sparkling, cynical take of the Snyder-Gray murder trial, Alexander Woollcott considers Nan Patterson, H. L. Mencken's dyspeptic views on forensic psychology, Theodore Dreiser's reflections on the Robert Allen Edwards case, a case that strongly resembled the one that inspired An American Tragedy, while the incomparable Dorothy Killgallen covers the same case with a completely different aesthetic. We have Edna Ferber covering the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the kidnap-murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., Jim Thompson weighing in with Oklahoma noir and James Thurber attending the Hall-Mills trials. A.J. Liebling reports on the frenetic, cut-throat newspaper wars raging in New York at the turn of the 20^th Century through the lens of the torso murder of Turkish Bath Attendant, William Gildensupper while Zora Neale Hurston absorbs the atmosphere of racial tension in Live Oak, Florida surrounding the 1952 killing of Dr. Clifford Leroy by Ruby McCollum. Jack Webb writes about the Black Dahlia in a piece that inspires a young James Ellroy whose own contribution appears later in the volume. Robert Bloch adds a touch of American Gothic with his reporting on the crimes of Wisconsin's Ed Gein and Calvin Trillin brilliantly intertwines two separate worlds when writing about a murder in Harlan County, Kentucky. Gay Talese has a look around the the former Manson Family homestead and Truman Capote refracts another angle on the Manson case with his fascinating interview with convicted killer, Bobby Beausoleil and Jimmy Breslin relates his personal involvement in the Son of Sam. Jay Robert Nash takes a look at the Lana Turner – Johnny Sompanato affair while Ann Rule represents what's current and popular in the true crime field.

             We also have authors whose name may not be as well known as those presented above but, judging from the selections presented here should be. Celia Thaxter arrives first at Smutty Nose to get first-hand accounts for Atlantic Monthly. José Martí reports on the trial of assassin Charles Giteau. Elizabeth Hardwick considers the ordeal of Caryl Chessman. Miriam Allen deFord delivers a penetrating dissection of the murder of Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb that would surely have risen the eminently risible hackles of H. L. Mencken, while W. T. Brannon's account of Richard Speck's murders of eight nurses in the city of Chicago remains a masterpiece of the genre.

             The fifty selections chosen by Mr. Schechter each capture the unique feel of the individual eras in which the crimes occurred and together they form a fascinating overview of the progression of crime in America and, by extension, the progress of America ourselves. The quality of the work itself is represented beautifully in this perfectly proportioned book. The cover graphics are elegant and effective. The paper, including endpapers, is of high quality and pleasing to the touch. The construction of this book is impeccable and it should be noted that it was printed in The United States of America in contrast to the many shoddily bound books currently produced and imported from Communist China.

             True Crime: An American Anthology is certainly the best book of its type in well over a decade. It is one of the best books I have read of any genre, period. I would highly recommend this work without any hesitation to anyone who enjoys reading about true crime, human behavior, the history of the United States or who just enjoys reading excellent selections of exceptional writing. Exceedingly well done.

              True Crime: An American Anthology is available at the Owen County Public Library. Check it out!

~ Laura M. Wilkerson

    Genealogy Department, OCPL

Children's and Teens' Summer Reading Program 2011 Review

Well, Summer Reading has come and gone for another year.  Our themes, "One World, Many Stories" and "You Are Here" took us around the world and back again.  We looked at a variety of countries, cultures past and present, and had a wide variety of programs.  We had 268 participants this year.  Average attendance at our Fantastic Friday programs was 95.  [Not too shabby.]  Hopefully everyone had as much fun as we did!

There are lots of photos on the library's website.  (Scroll down to see the Photo Gallery button.)

For those of you that are interested, we are planning to have the steel drum guys come back and do an outdoor concert for us. 

We did a few things different this year.  Most notably, we did not ask participants to count pages.  We only asked that they read at least one book/comic/magazine/cereal box/etc. per week and write down the title in their reading "passport".  At the end of the program participants were given a special sticker in place of a certificate.   Feedback so far has been pretty positive.  If you have feedback about SRP, or anything else at the library, we hope you'll share with us. 

This is YOUR Owen County Public Library, and letting us know things like requests for materials, feedback on programs, etc. that we already offer, or suggestions and ideas for any aspect of the library is always helpful.  

Shared Reads: Wanton West: by Lael Morgan

            Wanton West: Madams, Money, Murder, and the Wild Women of Montana’s Frontier by Lael Morgan (Chicago Review Press, Inc., 2011) is a book whose parts are greater than the whole.

            Morgan introduces the reader to the pioneers of the Montana frontier both famous and infamous. She focuses largely on prostitutes in early Montana, drawing largely on real estate and census records to chart their declare and fall, or success and upward mobility as the case may be, and shows how many of Montana’s most respectable citizens financially backed various red-light districts in Montana. The book starts off reading like fiction which is a bit disconcerting to the Reader until we find that these passages are taken from a book, Madeleine: An Autobiography whose author is to this day Anonymous but who scholars believe was an experienced prostitute working in that era and who some believe went on to marry into a prominent Canadian family.

            It is somewhat surprising how many frontier prostitutes eventually went on to marry, some very well, and lead respectable lives, but choices were fewer on the frontier and the profession did not engender the stigma it later acquired. Many of the prostitutes mentioned in this book slip completely from the record at a time when it was easier to lose oneself than it is now and there are harrowing tales of suicide among the soiled doves of Montana.

            A particularly interesting section deals with the situation of Chinese prostitutes. At a time when authorities were concerned with both an alleged “yellow peril” and a presumed epidemic of “white slavery” the appalling abuse of Chinese women trafficked to the United States for purposes of prostitution were studiously ignored. Like the United States perception of the plight of women in fundamentalist groups or cultures is a matter of “culture” rather than of human rights, officials took a hands-off approach to the issue of the sexual slavery of Chinese women. The author admits because this was considered a matter for the Chinese to deal with official records are scanty but the author unearths some records that demonstrate the horror to which these women were subjected.

            Ms. Morgan also recounts early movers-and-shakers of the era, men who made their fortunes in mining and ranching and the women associated with them. Readers may be familiar with the factoid that Montana had the only Congressperson to vote against the United States’ entry into both World War I and World War II. What isn’t as well known is that this woman, Jeanette Rankin, only held two terms, widely separated, that resulted in her being in a position to cast those two career-ending votes. It is also surprising, and instructional for those following current political arguments concerning Original Intent, that the New York Times published an article arguing that Ms. Rankin’s election was clearly illegal as the U.S. Constitution clearly uses the pronoun “he” when putting forth the qualifications needed in order to hold elected office.

 This controversy echoes the controversy over the book, Madeline: An Autobiography, which resulted in the 1919 arrest of the then President of Harper & Brothers publishers, Clinton Tyler Brainard, upon a complaint from The Society for the Prevention of Vice. The complaint wasn’t based on any salacious details contained in the book, rather, The Society for the Prevention of Vice, objected to the fact that our anonymous Madeline showed no remorse over her former life of sin. Brainard, who rejected a plea deal that would have required him to divulge the author’s true identity, was initially convicted and fined $1,000, though that conviction was later reversed.

Another interesting story concerns Tom Cruse who made his fortune from gold mines and the tragic story of his daughter, Mary, a subject that fully warrants a full-length treatment. Also making an appearance is Huguette Clark, daughter of “Copper King,” William Clark. Hugette was still alive when this book went to press but she died two weeks shy of her 105 birthday in New York City on May 24, 2011. Huguette, who had been a something of a recluse since the 1930s and hospital bound since 1988, left a $30 million dollar bequest to her longtime nurse and caregiver while leaving the bulk of her estate, $300 million, to charity. She left a Water Lily painting by Charles Monet that she had purchased in 1930 to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. Indeed, it is curious to read how many of the people who made their money in Montana left it to institutions in Washington, D.C., New York, California, anywhere, it seems, but Montana.

There are also famous people who pop up along the narrative thread, most notably the artist Charles Russell. The boxer Stanley Ketchel takes up quite a bit of space and Calamity Jane spent some time on the Montana frontier. There is a charming, and tantalizing, appearance by Charlie Chaplin.     

The author helpfully provides a list of “major players” as well as a timeline of events in the back of the book. The author gives us well sourced footnotes but inexplicably omits a separate bibliography. The book does contain an index and some quite interesting photographs.  

Although the subject matter is interesting the book suffers from a lack of depth and writing that falls somewhat flat. Still, it is a diverting read and not unworthy of attention. Wanton West: Madams, Money, Murder, and the Wild Women of Montana’s Frontier is available at the Owen County Public Library. Check it out!

~ Laura Wilkerson, Genealogy Department, OCPL

Good advice for everyone to remember.

What are your thoughts on this?

June Is Adopt a Cat Month!

This is Buttons T.Cat Wilkerson

He is a Beautiful Boy

He is the Tab Hunter of Kitties

Unless He Wants Out.

Then He's the Steve McQueen of Kitties

Buttons Was Adopted From

The Owen County Humane Society

When He Was Found

He Was Close to Death

But They Nursed Him Back to Health

He Then Spent 8 1/2 Months in a Cage

With a Sign That Read

Vicious! Do Not Pet!

Until My Son Brought Him Home to Us.

Buttons Is a Wonderful Cat

And a Loving Companion

He Just Doesn't Like Cages

Here is One of the Cats Currently at 

The Owen County Humane Society,

A No-Kill Shelter

Although I am Sure None of Them

Are Quite So Wonderful as Buttons

I am Sure Many of Them 

Are About 99.857% as Good

So If You Want to Throw a Little Love Their Way

For the Kittens, and the Cats

And Yes, Even the Dogs

Their Website Is

http://www.owenhumanesociety.com/

Marley Mouseater

Who Will Be 21 Years Old

This Summer

 

OCPL On the Move

Our "On the Move" program is a community outreach program that visits four areas around Owen County.  We bring library materials for all ages, storytimes and activities for kids. 

Today, I am writitng this from Cunot's Community Center.  We also visit the communities of Coal City, Gosport, and Patricksburg.  We visit each location twice each month, and are timing our Summer visits to coincide with the Summer Food Service Program, which provides free lunches to kids.

For dates, times and locations you can check our website.  Come by and see us this Summer!

 

New James Patterson Coming!

The perfect life

A successful lawyer and loving mother, Nina Bloom would do anything to protect the life she's built in New York—including lying to everyone, even her daughter, about her past. But when an innocent man is framed for murder, she knows that she can't let him pay for the real killer's crimes.

The perfect lie

Nina's secret life began 18 years ago. She had looks to die for, a handsome police-officer husband, and a carefree life in Key West. When she learned she was pregnant with their first child, her happiness was almost overwhelming. But Nina's world is shattered when she unearths a terrible secret that causes her to run for her life and change her identity.

The perfect way to die

Now, years later, Nina risks everything she's earned to return to Florida and confront the murderous evil she fled. In a story of wrenching suspense, James Patterson gives us his most head-spinning, action-filled story yet—a Hitchcock-like blend of unquenchable drama and pleasure.

Available  June 28th

Local History: Nellie MacMillan Writes Home, 1914

            On December 18, 1914, Nellie MacMillan wrote home.

            Mrs. McMillan had been born Helen Artie Tarleton Belles in the year 1856 in Indianapolis, Indiana to Dr. Joshua Tarleton Belles and his wife, Julia Reid Belles. Her mother died when Nellie was almost five after delivering four more children, all stillborn. Dr. Belles and his daughter then moved to Spencer, Indiana where Nellie lived until she was sent to the Henrietta Colgan School in Indianapolis to learn fine manners and social graces.

            While there, she met John Bayless “Jack” Hill, the son of a prominent Indianapolis family. They bonded over a shared love of music and artistic sensibilities and on June 30, 1874 the pair married in Spencer. Jack died five months later.

            At loose ends, the young widow persuaded her father to send her to Europe to study voice. He agreed and Nellie, who is said to have had a beautiful contralto voice, went to Europe where she studied and performed in France, Italy, and England. It was in Paris where she met Maurice Crawford MacMillian; whose father Daniel had co-founded MacMillan Publishing in 1843. The couple married in 1884. Although Maurice MacMillan has been described as “retiring” and “distant,” he was an amateur musician and he sang a duet with his bride at their wedding reception. Nellie and Maurice MacMillan went on to produce three sons; Daniel, Arthur, and Harold. Her son Harold would later remark that it was one of the great regrets of his life that he never heard his mother sing, as she had curiously “lost her voice” after the birth of her first child.

            Nellie MacMillan would sometimes return home to visit Spencer, once bringing her husband Maurice, but just before Christmas, 1914, she down in her home at Birch Grove House in West Sussex, England and wrote a letter to Mrs. Ella Belles of Indianapolis who forwarded it to the Owen Leader for publication.  England had declared war on Germany in August of that year and the United States for more than two year away from entering the fray when Mrs. MacMillan wrote:

“I hope you are all well and will have a pleasant Christmas together. This will be a sad time for everyone here for there is not a family that has not lost relations or friends in this war. Dan and Harold are in the New Army but will not go out until spring. Arthur has always had a weak heart and they will not take him. He is very unhappy not to be in training with his brothers. Never has anything been finer than the ardour of all the young men, of all classes. If only England had listened to Lord Robert’s warnings, she would not be in such an unprecedented state. However the nation is rising splendidly to meet the demands of it and complete harmony and unity exists. All classes are brought together in a wonderful way. There are no such things now as party politics and differences in religion, of class: all are Britons; even the poorest is willing to give the best he has and the whole Empire has given its best and much of it. This is no ordinary war but a war to crush out forever the idea that “Might is Right” and the idea that all nations great and small, would do better under the Iron Rule of Prussia with her “Kultur” rammed down the throats of all of us, and every man and every boy, every penny in the Empire will be given before this is allowed. I only wish I had 20 sons to give to such a cause.

“We have had a very wet winter. In France it is very wet too, and life in the trenches is very hard but there are no complaints and never were soldiers more cheerful and unselfish.”

            The Lord Roberts Nellie MacMillan was referencing in her letter was Lord Frederick Roberts, born in India in 1832, the son of a British General. After being educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and the Addiscombe Military Academy, he first saw combat as a mercenary for the East India Company during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or, as it is known in India, The First War of Independence. He then transferred to the British Army where he took part in the Abyssinian Campaigns against the Emperor of Ethiopia, Tewadros II. He then served in the Afghan War of 1878, and was appointed commander of Kabul and Kandahar after the prior commander, Pierre Louis Napoleon Cavagnari, was killed by mutinous Afghan soldiers. After his rousing success in Afghanistan, Roberts was sent to South Africa to take part in the Second Anglo-Boer War. This living tattoo of Empire returned to England in 1902 where he founded the “Pilgrim’s Society” made up of influential politicians, businessmen, diplomats and writers with a goal to “promote good-will, good-fellowship, and everlasting peace between the United States and Great Britain,” and; to this day, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II, hosts dinners to welcome each new U.S. Ambassador to Britain to their ranks. He also became, in 1905, the head of National Service League which lobbied for compulsory military training for every British male between the ages of 18 and 30 and which called for universal conscription in preparation for a “Great European War.”

            Nellie’s son Harold was wounded at the Battle of Loos in September, 1915, and then “lightly wounded” at Ypres salient on July 19, 1916. Then in September, 1916, at the Battle of the Somme, he was seriously wounded when he was shot through the left thigh and pelvis. Crawling into a trench, McMillan lay there for three days, intermittently reading from a pocket edition of the Greek tragedian Aeschylus’s play, Prometheus Bound, a work McMillan found to be, “not inappropriate to my position.” He was rescued by a Company Sergeant but his wounds became badly infected and he believed that it was only the actions of his mother, who did an end-run around military protocol to get him additional medical treatment, that his life was saved.

            “I owe everything to my mother,” Harold MacMillan stated.

            His wife, the Lady Dorothy Evelyn Cavendish, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, seemed to have a differing opinion. Dorothy and Harold were married in 1920 and went to live at Birch House with Maurice and Nellie. It was there Dorothy’s children saw her sticking pins into a wax Voodoo doll of Nellie.

            Over 700,000 British soldiers sacrificed their lives in World War I. Out of the 26 freshmen in MacMillan’s class at Balliol College, Oxford, only two of them survived the war. Harold MacMillan was awarded the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal and the aftermath of his wounds would plague him for the rest of his life. After the War, McMillan went into politics and publishing, becoming an outspoken critic of appeasement and joining Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet. In 1957 he was appointed Prime Minister of Great Britain after the resignation of Anthony Eden. He served in this capacity until 1963, a year which saw both the Vassall and Profumo scandals. When asked what his biggest challenge as a states man had been, MacMillan replied, “Events, my dear boy. Events.”

            Harold MacMillan made a “sentimental journey” to Spencer in 1956. He attended services at the Methodist Church where his mother once sang and laid a wreath on the grave of his maternal grandfather, Joshua Belles, at Riverside Cemetery. After a barbeque feast at McCormick’s Creek State Park, local residents presented the future Prime Minister with a jar of Paw-Paws, the “Indiana Banana.” Harold MacMillan would make three more trips to Spencer, twice accompanied by his grandson, Alexander, who came back on his own as the Earl of Stockton in 1994 but that’s the last we’ve seen of the MacMillans since.

            Nelly MacMillan died in 1937 at the age of 84 and is buried in Sussex. Four years before her death she became instrumental in the publication of Margaret Mitchell’s only book, Gone With the Wind. Nellie had plucked the novel from a slush pile in her husband’s home office and, after reading it, insisted that MacMillan Publishers buy all the international rights to it.

            On Thursday, May 5, 2011, Claude Stanley Choules, the last living combat veteran of World War I, died at the age of 110 in a nursing home in Western Australia. Mr. Choules was born in Great Britain in 1901. At the age of 14 he joined the Royal Navy and in 1918 he witnessed the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet from the deck of the HMS Revenge. Mr. Choules later settled in Australia, transferring to the Royal Australian Navy, where he served during World War II.  Later in life he became an outspoken pacifist, refusing to participate in annual commemoration parades and boycotting Australia’s Anzac Day.

            The last American Doughboy, Frank Buckles, died earlier in 2011 on February 27^th in West Virginia. He was also 110 years old. He had lied about his age so he could join the fight at 16. He was sent to Europe where he drove an ambulance on the Western Front. After the War, in 1941, while working as a steamship company as a purser in the Philippines, he was captured by Japanese troops and held prisoner for more than three years.   

            The only person in the world left who served in WWII is Florence Beatrice Patterson Green of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England. Miss Patterson joined the Women’s Royal Air Force in September, 1918 when she was 17. Her service is usually described as that of “waitress” though her official title was Officer’s Mess Steward. Ms. Patterson-Green turned 110 on February 19^th, 2011. We wish her Godspeed.

~ Laura Wilkerson
   Genealogy Department, OCPL

National Library Week

April 10-16th is National Library Week.  Yesterday (Tuesday, April 12th) was actually Library Worker Appreciation Day, however we here at OCPL are celebrating today, Wednesday.  Each year at this time we enjoy lunch/dinner.  This year, we added the fun of the library's new Nintendo Wii.  So far I've seen great fun had by employees playing such games as Family Feud, and various events in the Wii Sports and Sports Resort including boxing, archery, bowling, table tennis, canoeing, and now they are cycling.  Action photos are difficult to capture with my phone, so please forgive the blur.  (just the fastest way to get them posted)

The Wii system is our newest addition to the library and will be used for a variety of programming.  We are planning teen and family events in the near future.  Should be really fun! 

We also picked up a few more games that will be available for check out soon for all three systems.  Checking out games has proven very popular, and as we are just getting started, there are usually not very many in.  Games tend to get checked out as soon as they come in, which is great!  Please keep checking back to see if your favorite title is in.  Requests welcome. 

~Jennifer

A Short Tip About Spam Email

Last week the world's largest "permissions-based" email marketing company, Epsilon, was hacked into and names and email addresses were stolen.

What does this mean to you?
First of all you should understand what "permissions-based" means. Epsilon is a company that collects names and email addresses that you the customer have given certain companies permission to use. Some of these companies include: US Bank, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Best Buy, Kroger, TiVo, and Walgreen’s. Epsilon represents as many as 2,500 different businesses. If you are a customer of any of these companies and you provided them with your email, then you you might be affected. 


Now what harm can this do to you?
Hackers will not be able to directly harm you with this information that they have stolen. What they can do is get to you cleverly with your email address. They can send you a carefully crafted email targeted just for you to try to get more personal information from you. This is called "phishing". You could receive several emails that appear to come from the company where they stole your email address to begin with. For instance; lets say that I am a customer of Best Buy and I have willingly given them my email for a warranty on something I bought from them. A hacker then sends me an email that might not be marked as spam and looks like it really is from Best Buy. In this email they inform me that my account needs updating. They might ask me to log in and provide my Social Security number or even my debit/credit card information. Once I do this, they have me. I have given them information that they can use to charge things to my account or to steal my identity. 
"Phishing" emails can also get you to unknowingly install a harmful virus onto your computer that can send out any personal information on your computer. They can also install what is called a "key logger" which can record everything you type on your computer, including credit card numbers, etc. 


What you need to know.
A legitimate company will never ask you to provide personal information through an email. Chances are the company already has any information they need from you. If they need to know something they will contact you in a safer way. Never open an email that looks suspicious. Be cautious and skeptical. Do not reply to the email. Never send any personal information through an email to someone you are not one hundred percent sure about. 


Be sure to stop by the library for more information about spam email and how to recognize and avoid it. One of the best ways to stop this is to educate everyone about it. Even if that is one person at a time. 


Brad - OCPL

Standard Hero Behavior

When I picked up this book, the front flap made me laugh out loud.  A good sign.  The first paragraph:  "SHB. Standard Hero Behavior.  According to Quayle's Guide to Adventures for the Unadventurous, SHB involves things like sucking man-eating-spider venom from your own butt and fighting a horde of marauders with your own severed arm after said marauders have cut it off."

Mason Quayle is a bard living in a town whose heroes have long since fled. No heroes = no adventurous tales and nothing for a bard to write about. So when the opportunity arises for Mason to go on a real-life quest--a chance to be a hero himself--he takes it. Following in the footsteps of his long-vanished hero father, Mason and his best friend, Cowel, set out on a journey full of misadventure and run-ins with an unusual cast of characters, among them, a retired hero-cum-shoe-salesman, a somnambulist sword fighter, a swarm of unfriendly (and deadly) pixies, a wholesome young witch, and a werewolf hit man. They also stumble upon the answers to the questions that have haunted Mason for the past 10 years: Where is his father? Why didn't he return to his family? Was he really a hero?  (From the publisher's website.)

While this book has humor, and adventure, it also has heart.  It was nominated for the 2010-2011 Young Hoosier Book Award in the Middle Grade category.  The author, John David Anderson, lives in Indiana, which is a fun fact that has nothing to do with anything really.   Sometimes we think of authors as all living in New York or somewhere, which is just not the case, but I digress.

My son (11) and I read this one together, and we both really enjoyed it.  Our would-be-heroes, Mason and Cowel are great characters, both with their own strengths and weaknesses.  For example, Cowel has an entertaining habit of sneezing fits when the threat of danger is even suspected.  Mason is slightly braver, and committed to helping his village, while looking for clues as to what happened to his father.  Their borrowed horse, Steed, is the least spirited horse an adventurer ever had, until they discover the secret of really making him move.  I will add that some of the language may not agree with younger children and their parents.

One of my favorite things about this book is that the story opens with a description of a bird sitting on a signpost, and comparison between the bird and the nearby bard, and ends with an altered look at the same bird and bard.  This simple device allows the reader to see the changes Mason's adventures have brought about. 

Over all, I would recommend this book for mainly boys in the 5-8th grade range, although I think it would be enjoyable to anyone who enjoys a good story.  My favorite chapter title:  The Queen Bee, the Rusty Nail, and the Narcoleptic Somnantilist.

~Jennifer

Shared Reads: The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago

The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago by Douglas Perry (Viking, 2010) is a book that is really more than the sum of its parts. Ostensibly about accused murderesses Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, the raw material that would later be transformed into the characters Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, and the reporter who was inspired by them, Maurine Watkins. In actuality the book captures a glittering moment in 1924 when six women’s life hung in the balance as they awaited trail in the Cook County Jail and a dozen Chicago newspapers, staffed for the first time with ambitious, modern, female reporters, competed fiercely for stories, doing whatever it took to secure a scoop and a coveted byline on the front page.

            Beulah Annan, 24, was the star, considered the “prettiest woman ever charged with murder in Chicago,” garnered loads of ink after killing her paramour in her family apartment. After she shot her man she put the jazz age record, Hula Lou, on the phonograph and then telephoned her husband at work. Belva Gaertner, 40, the “most stylish” woman in the Cook County Jail, was a former vaudeville performer who had already made headlines during a scandalous divorce from her wealthy industrialist husband, William Gaertner. She was accused of shooting and killing her married paramour after a drunken evening out and about.

            Illinois had been fairly notorious for its reluctance to convict women, no matter how weighted in favor of conviction the evidence might seem, but there were ominous signs on the horizon. While Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan waited in jail. Two of their comrades, Katherine Malm, a gangster girl who acted as lookout in a fatal robbery, was convicted and sentenced to life, and Sabella Nitti, an immigrant woman who was convicted of conspiring with her illicit lover to murder her husband and sentenced to hang. Rounding out this cast of characters was Elizabeth Unkafer, held for the shooting death of her boyfriend, Lela Foster, who had shot and killed her husband. We also find the gorgeous, unstable, twenty-three year old Wanda Stopa, daughter of a respectable, Polish working-class family, the first “girl lawyer” to work in the State’s attorney’s office, shooting through the story like a comet. Wanda, who fancied herself a Bohemian, shot and killed an elderly workman who interfered with her attempt to kill the wife of her older, married, advertising executive boyfriend. Wanda then led police on a manhunt accompanied by screaming headlines before she took her own life at a Detroit hotel.

            Covering these trials was Maurine Watkins, beautiful in her own right, who came to Chicago by way of Radcliffe, Butler, Transylvania U and Crawfordsville, Indiana and walked right into the office of the city editor of the Chicago Tribune and talked herself into a job. Maurine joined a sisterhood of sorts with Genevieve Forbes of the Daily Tribune, Ione Quinby of the Evening Post and Sonia Lee of the American, all of whom specialized, for a time, in writing about female criminality.      

            For a while it was the Roaring Twenties personified with booze and flappers and a new freedom that women were determined to experience and Perry does a fine job in capturing that staccato tenor of the times.

            In sensational trials, both Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan were found not guilty by their respective all-male juries but contrary to popular perception they did not go on to star in vaudeville either separately or as a team. Belva Gaertner remarried her wealthy ex-husband, who had remained smitten by his ex-wife and who bankrolled her defense, and then divorced him again. Beulah divorced her faithful husband after the baby she claimed to be carrying during her trial never materialized and married and divorced a boxer, her third husband, who beat her. She divorced the boxer and shortly thereafter she died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-seven. She is buried in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Utica, Daviess County, Kentucky.

            Maurine Watkins did not stay long in Chicago, or work long as a reporter. The fad for glamorizing female murderers came to a screeching halt with a crime that both fascinated and repulsed Chicago and gripped the imagination of the entire Nation – the murder of little Bobby Franks, son of retired millionaire industrialist Jacob Franks, by two individuals, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Leopold and Loeb were the teenage sons of equally wealthy Chicago families. Intellectually precocious, they fancied themselves Nietzschen Supermen determined to prove themselves beyond the pale of mere mortals by committing what they presumed would be the perfect crime. They were caught after Leopold’s distinctive eyeglasses were found at the scene of the murder and other evidence quickly fell into place. Richard Loeb’s father, a lawyer and Vice President at Sears & Roebuck, hired famed attorney Clarence Darrow to defend the pair. Against all odds Darrow saved the two from hanging and secured sentences of life in prison instead. Dickie Loeb met the letter of that punishment in 1936 after he was slashed 50 times in the shower with a straight razor by fellow prisoner James E. Day and died. Day claimed self-defense and was never charged with the killing of Loeb while Nathan Leopold was paroled to Puerto Rico where he died in 1971.     

            With Leopold and Loeb stepping into the spotlight murder in Chicago didn’t seem nearly as lighthearted as before and the female reporters who specialized in crimes committed by women were reassigned or walked away. It didn’t help that with Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner acquitted, Sabella Nitta and Kitty Malm in State Prison, and Wanda Stopa dead at her own hand, the only women left at the Cook County Jail were old and ethnic which didn’t hold the same allure as Jazz Babies on a Bender. After covering the Leopold and Loeb trial, Maurine Watkins was reassigned to write movie reviews.

During her time at Radcliffe she had taken a playwriting course from George Pierce Baker at Harvard. By the end of 1924 Professor Baker had moved on to the newly established Department of Drama at Yale and Watkins was percolating an idea for a play based on her experiences as a reporter. That play was Chicago and it became a smash hit.

Maurine Watkins was never able to replicate the stage success of Chicago. Soon she was off to Hollywood where she dabbled in screenplays and short stories before moving to Jacksonville, Florida and committing herself to Christian endeavors and raising scholarships for students wishing to pursue studies in the Greek language or the Bible. She died of lung cancer in 1969 at the age of seventy-three. Deeply disappointed in both the 1927 silent version of Chicago starring Phyllis Haver, and the 1942 Ginger Rogers vehicle, Roxie Hart, Watkins refused to license her play as a musical in her lifetime but in 1975 her estate sold the rights to Bob Fosse who turned it into a smash hit on Broadway starring Gwen Verdon as Roxie Hart and Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly. It ran for 936 performances plus a tour. Twenty years later it was revived to equally great acclaim and in 2002 a movie version of Chicago starring Catherine Zeta Jones as Velma and Renee Zellweger as Roxie won six of its twelve Oscar nominations.

Douglas Perry has written an engaging romp of a book with serious undertones touching on criminals and the culture of celebrity. Mr. Perry does include some photographs in his book but he has a mildly annoying habit of describing particular photos in great details and then not including those photos in the book. I also would have liked for him to have shown more thorough follow-through on all the women mentioned in the book but overall I found The Girls of Murder City to be a fast and enjoyable read that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anyone interested in the era.
 - Laura Wilkerson

Not-So-Random Picture Books I Love

First, in honor of the birthday of one of our favorite authors, Mo Willems I will share a couple of my favorites that he has written.  I should say, written and illustrated.  Mo's simple illustrations are amazing at showing emotion, yet give kids hope that they too could draw them.  Especially in the Pigeon and Elephant and Piggie books. 

Speaking of the Pigeon, we'll start with him.  There are several books featuring this character.  My favorite happens to be The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog.  In this book we get a further glimpse into the Pigeon's character with his discovery of a hot dog, and the introduction of his nemesis the Ducky.  Though he is irritated, to say the least, by the Ducky, he does end up sharing the hot dog. (I hope that doesn't ruin the book for anyone.)  The pigeon is so much like many kids I've met, at once adorable and a bit annoying.  Very amusing and highly enjoyable, like the rest of Mr. Willems' books.

Elephant (or Gerald) and Piggie are the main characters in a series of early readers written and illustrated by Mo Willems as mentioned above.  They are laugh out loud funny, and kids of all ages love them.   Great for reading aloud, as long as your audience can see the illustrations, as they are as integral to the story as the words.  My favorite (so far) is Can I Play Too? which introduces us to another friend for Elephant and Piggie.  A snake.  Basically, the two friends are playing catch with a ball, and Snake wants to play too, but how can he, snakes have no arms?  Hilarity ensues as they try to include their new friend.  So. Funny.  Really.  If you are unfamiliar with these books, you really must experience to appreciate them.  What are you waiting for?  Get to the library and check out some of these books!

Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed and Leonardo the Terrible Monster are another two of my favorite books by Mr. Willems, but there are more (I didn't even mention the Knuffle Bunnies or Edwina).  His books have heart, humor, great characters and great stories.  Not to mention dealing with day to day dilemmas that we all face. 



On to other books.

Today is also the birthday of author Jane Yolen.  Jane is the author of many, many (over 300) books.  These are but a few of her picture books. Many people are familiar with the "How Do Dinosaurs ____?" series, and award winners such as Owl Moon, however these are not the ones I want to share today.

Yolen's writing is always poetic and wonderful.  Some rhyme, some do not.

Come to the Fairies' Ball is a beautiful, beautiful book, wonderfully illustrated by  Gary Lippincott.  An enchanting, rhyming tale of the invitation, preparations and fun of a ball held by the King and Queen of the Fairies, with a Cinderella story in the midst.  The lyrical words and amazing illustrations make this one of my favorite picture books.  It is whimsical and magical.   I cannot put into the proper words how beautiful this book is.    

Jane's love of poetry is beautifully shown in My Uncle Emily, a story based on true events in the life of Emily Dickinson told through the eyes of her young nephew Gilbert (Gib) who was six at the time.  This touching story so captures this young boy's love of his Aunt, and provides a window into the family of one of America's most famous poets.  Wonderful story.  I wanted more, so I read the "What is true about this story" on the last page in which she includes the full poem used in the story entitled "Tell all the Truth" and tells more about the family.  This book was charmingly illustrated by Nancy Carpenter. 


One of the most moving picture books I have read is also written by Jane Yolen.  All Those Secrets of the World is an account of Jane's father going off (and coming home again) to war which took place when she was four years old.  (she was six when he returned)  I almost can't talk about this one, it moved me so.  The story begins with Jane's detailed recollections of the her father's leaving, the big ship, the ice cream Grandma bought her and her cousin Michael, "chocolate with jimmies", the hugs, and butterfly kisses.  The next day the children play in the water of the bay (which they were not supposed to do), and it is there that Michael shares one of the secrets of the world that help little Janie to understand better her father's absence, which she then shares with him upon his return.  Again, beautifully written by a master storyteller, and beautifully illustrated by Leslie Baker.

Whew!  I think that's enough for one day.  : )

~Jennifer