life before luna: Rooted in Books
1972-1977
At Grandma Jo's house there was an upstairs bedroom with built in drawers chock full of books. Grandma Jo was a storyteller. She told me (and all of her 32 grandchildren) the story of Moosy the cow, which later became my first attempt at authorship, "published" on brown paper cut from grocery sacks and bound with a piece of red yarn. Years later in my college children's literature class at the University of Miami I made my second attempt, using a 5 x 7 white blank book, printed fabric with farm animals, cut felt and tiny red pre-tied ribbons with red rosettes for my multimedia illustrations. But Grandma Jo wasn't my only literary influence. I was the only child of two librarians, Joy and Dennis Prichard, who met in graduate school for library science at the University of Pittsburgh. At the time of my birth, dad was a branch head at the East Liverpool, Ohio branch of Kent State University. Soon after, mom began her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction/Media studies at Kent. As such, it wasn't surprising that books and stories = life in our home.
earliest inspiration for writing: 1977-1984
As a lover of language in all its forms and an early childhood pedagogist, I subscribe to the idea that literacy skills are acquired in the following order: listening, speaking, reading and then writing. This first concept, that of listening, began for me decades before the popularity of Audible, Libro.fm or other mainstream audiobook formats. For me, the magic began in the late 70's with such notable recordings as Jill Clayburgh narrating the wondrous adventures of siblings Claudia and Jamie Kincaid in The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. Bedtime meant listening to the exploits of such improbable characters as Pippi Longstocking, voiced by Esther Benson, or Ian Richardson’s 1974 version of The Lion,The Witch, and The Wardrobe produced by Caedmon Records. Other favorites included Nicol Williamson’s 1974 recording of The Hobbit by Argo Records, Marlo Thomas’ Free to Be You and Me, and another Caedmon Records production, Ray Bolger narrating The Wizard of Oz in 1976. Somehow I never caught on with modern audiobooks, despite their mainstreaming in the late 90’s and early oughts. The sound bytes of my childhood bedtime companions echo too strongly and do not want to be replaced. Mr. Beaver of Narnia: “They say Aslan is on the move.” Gollum, in the swampy dark near the edge of the chasm, “What has it got in its pocketses? Precious, O my precious!” and pretty much every line from Free to Be you and Me. I just couldn’t imagine anything I’d want to hear more.