Violet (Flower Girls) - Softcover

Kathleen Leverich lives in Sommerville, Massachusettes and in Maine.

In Her Own Words...

"Writing began for me as civil war. In 1953 at age five I penciled my first work: "K-a-t-h-y L." These painstakingly printed letters on a white index card earned me borrower's privileges at the Old Greenwich, Connecticut, Perot Memorial Library. With those privileges I planned to trounce my two-and-a-half-years-older sister (a world-class reluctant reader), just once, in something.

"That was my motivation. As an unexpected bonus I found I loved to read. Our house had a wraparound porch, a front stairway and a back, two fireplaces--one standard-sized, one straight from the Hall of the Mountain King. It perched atop the mightiest sledding hill in all of Riverside/Old Greenwich. In peak periods its shingled sprawl contained five of us kids plus Boots the cat, Shan the dog, two parakeets, two Siamese fighting fish--oops!--make that one, plus Mom and Dad.

"I read Grimm's Fairy Tales, Greek myths, Norse legends, and Nancy Drew. I discovered that printing those painstaking marks on paper was not only useful in the Sibling Wars, it was fun. Before I knew it, I was writing stories for school. At first the hope of a good mark served as a carrot. Then I made a discovery. I put pencil to paper, and connections I had never consciously made flowed from graphite onto yellow lined paper. I was astonished.

"At about this time I must have voiced my desire for some straw to spin into gold. My mother's announcement that gold-spinning--and every other form of magical transformation-was "just a story" rocked me to my soles.

"Not long after, Mr. Ives the Sunday School teacher "leveled" with my classmates and me. Behind every miracle lay a grounded-in-science explanation. Aberrant tides had caused the Red Sea to part. Cana's wedding guests had imagined water tasted like wine. This was scandalous news. As I trudged up our steep driveway that day, I thought, Next someone will claim parrots can't talk.

"They mimic," said fifth-grade-teacher Miss Holmes the following Friday. She had paused in her read-aloud of Enid Blyton's Mystery Island to explain. "Yes, the parrot character can speak. But does he understand? No."

"This was the final straw. I made up my mind to show Miss Holmes-Mr. Ives--Mom--everyone, they were dead wrong. Following stints as a University of Southern California film student, a credit checker at a disreputable L. A. loan firm, a Lincoln Center tour guide, a slacker in Almunecar, Spain, as an editor at Cricket magazine, and as Addison-Wesley's children's books editor, that is what I set pencil to paper to do.

"In each book I attempt the same thing: to spin everyday events into the larger-than-life reality I can't prove but know is there. Serious story or comic, that's my aim. I get support in this endeavor from my larger-than-life husband, Walter Lorraine, and hints of a higher consciousness from Nikka, our great-hearted dog.

"I do my writing in the tiny office of our tall house on a teeming street in Greater Metropolitan Boston. And in an equally tiny office in our bright and airy house on a quiet point in Downeast Maine. My gracious older sister swears she reads every word."

Lynne Cravath is the illustrator of many popular books for young readers, including the MathStart® books Shark Swimathon, the Penny Pot, and Spunky Monkeys on Parade, all by Stuart J. Murphy. Ms. Cravath lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Grade 2-4?Because of their names and a common dream to be a flower girl in a wedding, the third graders in this series have formed a club called "The Flower Girls." Confident and popular Daisy is thrilled when she is asked to be a part of her grandfather's ceremony. But her enthusiasm diminishes when she discovers that her future step-grandmother has three granddaughters who will share the spotlight with her. When the girls ask Daisy to join them in harmonizing at the wedding, she tries to steal back the spotlight by performing her part as though she were singing solo, but eventually realizes that it's better to work together. Shy and polite Violet is asked to be a flower girl by her cousin, Roxy, a punk rocker with spiked hair and a nose earring. No frilly pink dress will do for this wild occasion and Roxy picks out an orange miniskirt and lavender mohair crop top for Violet. At first dismayed, she begins to realize that she likes her outfit because it makes her feel more sure of herself. Although the main characters and the premise of this series are overly sweet, the stories are full of interesting, quirky episodes and the characters learn from their experiences. Readers find themselves drawn into the colorful world of weddings that the girls find so alluring.?Carrie A. Guarria, Lindenhurst Memorial Library, NY
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