 CHILDREN'S SERIES IN KANSAS TRAVELER by Eunice Boeve The 2006 summer issue of the Kansas Traveler (office at at 147 N. Dellrose, Wichita, KS 67208)begins the first story of a series of stories for children about past times in Kansas. Titled THE TIME MACHINE, in each story, the reader will find nine-year-old twins, Jack and Julie,in some part of Kansas experiencing a part of history. Summer 2006: With the Kansa (Kaw)Indians in a time before the white settlers moved onto the land, the twins are transformed into Native Americans. Fall 2006: Jack and Julie ride the Orphan Train into Concordia in the early 1900s and witness the adoption process. Winter 2007: The twins experience a Kansas dust storm in this story about the Great Depression and meet their neighbor when he was a boy. Spring 2007: Jack and Julie visit Smith County and Dr. Brewster Higley, the writer of the state song, Home on the Range. Summer 2007: In 1846, at Council Grove, a stopover on the Sante Fee Trail, Jack and Julie see the Post Office Oak, a towering tree where messages are left by travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. Fall 2007: On a hill top outside of Hays, when Hays was an army post, the twins meet Elizabeth Polly who helps nurse the soldiers through an epidemic. Back in modern times, they see her statue carved by local artist Pete Felten. Winter 2008: The twins are house guests of Osa Johnson in Chanute. In the 1920s and 30s, she and her husband, Martin, filmed the animals and people of Africa and the South Sea Islands. Spring 2008: Near Blue Rapids is Alcove Spring, a stopover on the Oregon Trail. There in 1846, the twins meet the Reed and Donner children. Summer 2008: A replica of the first vertical flying machine to hold a patent is in the museum at Goodland. Jack and Julie were there in 1910 to witness it's first, but fatal flight. Fall 2008: Dave Strait worked at the POW camp in Concordia during WWII. He shows the twins the camp and introduces them to a German prisoner who has a pet dog. |
In My Office at Home ****************************************************** I’m sure my mother carried me into my first library, for she loved to read, and I imagine by the time I was of reading age, myself, she had checked out many hundreds of books from our local library in Libby, Montana. My father, a forty year old cowboy, when he married my mother, wrote a book length story of his cowboy days and the horses he’d known. It was never published. He died when I was five and in a move after his death, his manuscript was lost. Perhaps both parents influenced my desire to write, but I didn’t consciously begin the process until many years later. My first experience with the writing world was in the sixth grade when, at my teacher’s urging, I submitted a poem to the Weekly Reader. It wasn't accepted and although I received no formal notice, I consider it my first rejection. We moved from Montana to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, when I started high school, and I fell in love with journalism class. I dreamed of a career in the newspaper business, but time and circumstances have a way of casting long, dark shadows over dreams until, like plants without light, they shrivel and die. Perhaps the biggest blocker of the light of encouragement came from a school counselor who told me I had no aptitude for anything at all and he recommended I set my sights on marriage. I married a native Kansan and except for a year in Beaverlodge, Alberta, Canada have lived in Kansas ever since. I have four children and five grandchildren. I have worked as a paraprofessional in a school for special needs children and as a secretary/ As I approached my middle years, dreams of writing began to sneak back into my thoughts and, timidly, I began to act on those dreams. My first sales were of children’s short stories. An article about my dad for the Montana Magazine followed and, soon afterwards, I began a ten-year on-again off-again working affair with my first young adult novel, Trapped!. It was published in 1995. Later, I sold another article to the Montana Magazine about a black woman named Mary Fields, who lived at Cascade, Montana. Currently my young adult novels are: Trapped!, The Summer of the Crow, A Window to the World, and Maggie Rose and Sass. (Among other sources, they are available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Publish America, or through me.) My first adult novel is a western titled, Ride A Shadowed Trail. It was released just this spring. I am currently working on a sequel tentatively titled Across Many Trails which will find Josh in Montana. ****************************************************** |
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