“The RoseBouquet”

Excerpt from eBook Author Interview: Ruth Marlene Friesen, Ruthe’s Secret Roses As it appeared in Mind Like Water Monthly in the January 21, 2003 ezine, issue # 11
(Sincere thanks to the Publisher of Mind Like Water, Inc. for permission to reprint the interview here. To subscribe to this monthly ezine for ebook writers and publishers, write to newsletter @ mindlikewater.com)
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DIANE: Tell us about the one-of-a-kind children’s books that you create and give as gifts. How did you get started doing this?

RUTH: This is where my playful imagination has so much fun. After my niece Jalise was born I sat at my reception desk and visualized having her on my lap and having a conversation with her about kisses. (I was projecting for when she’d be about two). I picked up some water color markers and sketched gauzy donuts and stars, and cinnamon hearts flying between us. Suddenly I knew what to do. I added some lines of text to each page, and made a booklet. To keep her from chewing this booklet up too soon, I had the pages laminated and then sewed them together down the middle. I called it A Whimsical Textbook on Kisses.

Jalise is now going on 22, and has a one-year-old son of her own, but she still loves that book and wants to know when I’m going to get it published. Others have said the same thing, but I haven’t had time to pursue a publisher willing to take on an unknown, and picture-books are a little expensive for self-publishing.

I did one for her brother Jasel too, who always loved to help me with washing dishes when they came to visit. That one is in an odd poem format where he goes around asking Auntie Ruth, Grandma, and Great-grandma about how they did dishes, going back to when pioneers had to rub dishes with sand and wash them in a brook. “The Song the Dishwasher Sings” has full-page charcoal sketches, and is laminated too, with a home-made hardcover.

Another one I did was for an elderly friend in her 80s, who had many friends, and had for years babysat almost all the kids of our town, but as her memory slipped, she kept complaining that she had no friends. Margaret had often told me stories of how she had polio at age 2, and her siblings had pushed her to school and around the village in a wicker carriage and included her in everything. So I did up a picture book for her of her own life story, proving that “Yes, Margaret, You have Friends!”

Meantime, Jalise has just asked for a Hobbs book for her son Calvin, who is named after that cartoon character. I’ve got an idea for the book but haven’t started it yet.

[Read the whole interview at MindLikeWater.com]

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