Document text
Photo by Steve Johnson Author Sandy Bacon Harding, of the Eagle Point area, has written a children's mystery that revolves around a way of life she says few children have experienced. Author draws on farm life Her experiences as a girl meld into children's books Signing Who : Children's author Sandy Bacon Harding What : Reading/signing, "A Stick, a Stone and a Bone," a farm adventure book for children age 6 to 11 When : 2 p.m. Saturday. Where : Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 1400 Biddle Road, Medford Animals on a farm propel the central mystery and the subplots of "A Stick, A Stone and A Bone," a new children's book by Sandy Bacon Harding. Harding, who lives near Eagle Point, worries that most kids these days don't have any contact with a way of life that's rapidly disappearing. "So few kids have any experience of a farm," she says. "I ask them, and they say no." Jenny, the central character in Harding's new book, is herself a town kid. And she couldn't care less about her grandparents' farm until a series of adventures involving animals helps her come to terms with some difficult changes in her life. Harding, a grandmother who lived for years on a farm, has started Coronet Books, whose Lion's Paw imprint this month brings out the second book in a series that depicts farm life for children ages 6 to 11. Harding plans a reading and book signing on Saturday at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Medford. "Goose on the Loose," the first book in the series, introduces Grandpa and Grandma and the farm. Grandpa wears an old hat and putters around with tools and loves animals. Grandma wears old-fashioned dresses and makes her own cottage cheese from curds and whey. This time around, Jenny and her mother move near the farm after the death of Jenny's father to be near Grandma and Grandpa, Jenny's dad's parents. Although bored at first, Jenny soon learns interesting stuff about Jersey cows, baby lambs and other critters. Harding readily admits that similarities between things in the story and real things are far from purely coincidental. The farm in the story is similar to the one near Eagle Point that she and her husband have lived on -- along with assorted cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, turkeys and rabbits -- for eight years. Some of the events are taken from that time, too. Even the theme of the city girl unwillingly plopped down on a farm goes back to Harding's childhood. Uprooted at the age of 10 from Long Beach, Calif., by an executive father fleeing the fast track, she wound up with her family on 160 remote acres near Azalea north of the Rogue Valley. At first she hated it. "But within a few days we started seeing how much fun it was," she says. Harding started writing when forced to amuse herself as a girl. She thinks in this day of the Internet and video games there's something lost. "Kids have such a canned life," she says. Now 49, with a blended family of six children and a dozen grandchildren, Harding is an office manager for Southern Oregon Tallow. When she went back to school a few years ago to study business, she also picked up a lot of encouragement for her writing. She says the best part of the book project has been seeing the excitement on the faces of children. The hardest part is marketing, she says. She started Lion's Paw two years ago to help others who were having trouble getting published, but she hasn't had the time to publish anybody else yet. "It's very expensive," she says. "I'm practicing on me before I take on anybody else." The book is illustrated by Brenda Mickelson, of Medford, whose work Harding had seen and admired in her church. She's trying to interest wholesalers in the series. In the meantime it's available at Barnes & Noble in Medford and Bloomsbury and Treehouse Books in Ashland. A third book is in the works. Bet on some animals characters. "It's amazing the characters animals have," she says. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA