On Linden Square

Tenth Anniversary

I owe every effort, every endeavor, to the courses I’ve taken - adult ed, painting, writing. I need a deadline, an assignment. Otherwise I’d sit on the couch and twiddle my thumbs. Take a course! Join a group!

ON LINDEN SQUARE was born in a continuing ed class at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). HOW TO CREATE A PICTURE BOOK DUMMY with Cheryl Kirk-Noll, a dream of a teacher!

I had a story I wanted to try to tell, about a blizzard in Brookline, MA. I was new to the neighborhood and new to city life. When the snow finally stopped, I ventured outside with my shovel, intending to work on the driveway, but our little neighborhood park was a stronger draw.

I wanted to build something enormous out of snow. I began shoveling. Neighborhood kids were all running around, parents watching, somebody asked what I was doing. I said I wasn’t quite sure, but it was going to be big. Before we knew it, the park was swarming with shovelers, snowball rollers, sculptors. Here’s what we came up with.

More people showed up, the babies, the grandparents. Somebody decided to lug over a discarded Christmas tree from the snow bank in front of their apartment. A forest of Christmas trees sprouted. Streetlights came on. People milling about. At least that’s how I remembered it and that’s the story I was telling.

At RISD, Cheryl instructed us to fold a 24”x36” piece of newsprint into a little book. Now spread your story out onto the 32 pages you’ve created, she said. My cast of characters were a mixture of history and embellishment.

I described the neighborhood of characters, based in truth, but veering into the eccentric and I cast myself in the starring role as a helpful and wise mother of a young girl. My classmates loved the story, but wondered about the mother-hero. Enter the headliner, Stella Mae Culpepper (based of course, on my own young Olivia, who was off to be with dad for the weekend). Stella Mae seemed to live on her own. No parents anywhere. Aren’t all great children’s stories adult-less? A child will lead the way!

The first paintings were loosey goosey water colors, which I still have and still love.

I was a rookie children’s book author/illustrator, but aware enough to realize that when Anna Olswanger answered my query letter, I needed to drop everything. Her question, via email, was, Why a dragon? (I had been thinking of Custard the Dragon, a poem by Ogden Nash that Mother read to us all night after night.

After I calmed down, I knew, oh, OK,you’re right, dragons are everywhere. Trite! I sat there at my desk. Thinking. Rethinking. My odd characters began to speak, to tell me what they were creating out there in the snow. Mr. Rubenstein, Taxi-Cab Couple, Pillow-Fight Kids, Trombone Man, Mr. and Mrs. Chatterjee, Mouse Lady, Bottle Man, Miss Arpeggio, Fernando - I thank them all for their input.

It was an education, a long process of editing, finding a drawing style that pleased Anna O ( and that I could pull off). There was a fair bit of play-acting on my part. Oh yes, sure, I’ll get right on it. Be back to you shortly. Ho boy. Definitely one of those LEAP AND THE NET WILL APPEAR moments. The process, in all, probably took close to three years and was quite an education! Everyone ended up very happy, including me!

But perhaps, the thing I treasure most now, is the trailer my grandkids Egan, Reed and Kathryn helped me create. Ten years has passed. They are all getting taller than me. I have happily become Mouse Lady.

Someday I’ll tell you about the too-grown up music I wrote to accompany the book.