Children’s Book Author Gerald Mcdermott Will Lecture, Autograph
Gerald McDermott puts pictures to the ancient stories of native cultures.
In a series of brightly illustrated children’s books, McDermott tells, among others, the Southwest Native American tales of Coyote looking for trouble and Sun having a son (“Coyote” and “Arrow to the Sun”), the West African tale of Zomo the Rabbit looking for wisdom (“Zomo the Rabbit”) and the Pacific Northwest tale of Raven looking for light (“Raven”).
McDermott has won numerous awards, including three Caldecott Medals for “Raven,” “Coyote” and “Anansi the Spider.”
The California-based author-illustrator will be in Spokane Friday and Saturday to speak, sign books and hold a pair of public programs.
On Friday, McDermott will do an autographing session at 7 p.m. at the Children’s Corner Bookshop, 714 W. Main on the skywalk level. For more information, call 624-4820.
On Saturday, McDermott will hold two lecture-slide shows at the Spokane Public Library, 906 W. Main, in meeting room 1A. The first, at 10 a.m., is for Project Right Start day-care providers and their clients. The second, which is open to the public, will be held at 2 p.m.
For information, call 626-5314.
Children’s Corner
The book-signing by Gerald McDermott (see above item) kicks off the fall season of programs for the Children’s Corner Bookshop - the first season at its new location.
Other programs will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturdays, and all are free to the public. They include:
Oct. 14 - Storyteller Phyllis Silver will perform a selection of stories, tales, riddles and fables.
Oct. 21 - Beekeeper Bob Pyle will share his experience with bees and their culture. He will be joined by Maureen Kelly-Woitas, who will demonstrate candlemaking kits.
Oct. 28 - Catherine Scherer and Imagination Unlimited will present a pre-Halloween program of scary songs, etc.
Nov. 4 - Jacquelen Baucom will do a puppet-show adaptation of Jane Yolen’s book “Sleeping Ugly!”
Nov. 11 - Krysten Lee and Eric Hurtt, who make up the story-telling duo Tellers Two, will entertain with a variety of tales to tell.
Nov. 18 - Jacquelen Baucom will examine the question “Why do we tell stories?”
Writers rewarded
The public ceremony celebrating the 1995 Governor’s Writers Awards winners will be held Oct. 27 at the book fair Bibliomania in Seattle. The event, which will be held at Pier 48 on the Seattle waterfront, at Alaskan Way and South Main, will include remarks and readings by the award winners.
Former Spokane (now Seattle) writer Sherman Alexie will emcee the event, which will honor at least two Eastern Washington writers: Ursula Hegi of Nine Mile Falls for her novel “Stones From the River,” and Jack Nisbet of Spokane for his non-fiction study “Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America.”
The ceremony is free and open to the public.
Outdoors writer
The late Oregon poet William Stafford left a legacy of work behind him. Some of it is even on Washington roadsides.
Lines such as:
“Time used to live here./
It likes to find places like this/
and then leave so quietly/
that nothing wakes up.”
As part of an interpretive sign project of the Winthrop Ranger District, a series of road signs was established in the Methow Valley explaining both the Methow River and the value of water. Stafford was asked to write poems for the project, but his work wasn’t included in the final design.
His poems were, though, though some separate partial funding, included in special signs that were to be placed near the official ones.
Now those poems have been published in a limited-edition chapbook titled “The Methow River Poems” by Confluence Press of Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston. For information on the chapbook, call (208) 799-2336.
The reader board
Ian Frazier, New Yorker writer and author of the novel “Family,” will read from his book at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Auntie’s Bookstore.
Seattle poet Sherry Rand, author of “A Fall From the Door,” will read from her book at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Auntie’s Bookstore.
, DataTimes