Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
I was taking a class on using picture books to augment your lessons. It was actually pretty clever because it used videos of people reading picture books rather than you having to go find a bunch. It’s better to have them in person and frankly some of the videos were a little sketchy rights-wise, but it was a slick way to do a class. Anyway part of it was a bit of creative writing. I had finished 2 pages and the project when I re-read the directions and realized this didn’t quite fit the set up. I had to go back and write it again. I like this better though and since I already wrote it I decided to share it on here. This is also a little influenced by the only original story by Rose Wilder Lane that I genuinely like.
Change of Point of View Story by Sarah S. Uthoff
The secret agent spy sleeked along the base of the tall white building. It wasn’t the tallest building. That was the one called the Baa-Are-Nunnn whose red walls and black roof jutted high overhead blocking out the sunset from even here. She glanced back to see its large, solid form was still there. She nodded to herself when she saw it was still in its accustomed place.
Suddenly a loud, menacing growl thundered from inside the building. The wall of the building – the strange one that wasn’t built the same as the others – slowly began to raise up into the sky revealing a dark chamber within. The spy pressed herself even more strongly against the wall trusting on the black shadows to hide her as the large creature the others called Gran-Maw came out of the even larger white structure at the top of the hill and walked down the steps towards the white building.
The noise stopped and Gran-Maw disappeared into the hole carrying something that smelled… the spy stopped and sniffed again… like food. The spy whipped around the corner and into the now bright interior of the building. She jumped from one level to another slowly proceeding to the rafters. She peered down as Gran-Maw lifted the lid of the large, white, metal box and deposited her package inside as the interior light showed her the contents. Gran-Maw shut the lid. As she walked out of the hole the deep growl began again and the spy panicked. She froze on the rafter, but then the raised wall started to move. Frozen in horror the spy the wall was approaching the floor before she could will herself to move. She sprang forward on to the large metal beast sleeping beneath her which was still undisturbed despite the growling. She slid down the sloping front and threw herself against the wall…just as it came to rest on the concrete and the growling stopped.
“Oh no!” the spy thought. “TRAPPED!” And the lights shut off leaving her in darkness.
****
Sarah and the Spy
Grandma Dottie had a busy day. It was Wednesday, senior discount day at her local grocery store. She had filled up the back of her Jeep and carried in all the groceries before she had put her car away. Like she did every week, she wished her garage was connected and right outside the kitchen, but it wasn’t. It was out behind the house at the bottom of the hill.
Dottie’s best purchase today was some hamburger. She had gotten a huge roll of hamburger, but didn’t put the roll in the freezer as one huge thing. Her afternoon project was breaking it up into meal size pieces. She cooked each section with the seasoning that would match its purpose. She cooked loose meat sandwiches meat. She cooked taco meat. She made Salisbury steaks. She made hamburger patties with dill mixed in and a hole in the center. Then she carefully cooked, cooled, packaged, and labeled each parcel.
Earlier in the day her black cat, Bean, had been a botheration. Every time she finished and labeled a package of meat she’d carry it out and put it in the freezer in her garage. Each time she’d press the button for the garage door opener and let its motor open it. She’d go out the backdoor of her white house, down the steps, into the white garage, and put it away in the large white freezer. Then she’d walk back up the stairs, push the button to close the garage door and turn her attention to cooking her next batch of meat.
Bean wasn’t one of the barn cats. Dottie’s grandson had trained the cat. Bean thought it lived in the house. Dottie thought it did not. Their struggle continued with each time Dottie opened the door with Bean determined to come in and Dottie determined she would NOT.
Dottie was carrying the Salisbury steaks this time, but Bean didn’t appear when she came out. Dottie saw him skulking around the garage. She was glad not to have to deal with the distraction at the door. When Dottie walked back into the house Bean seemed to have disappeared and Dottie was glad to have won for now.
****
And don’t worry Bean didn’t even have to spend the night in the garage – this time – Grandma Dottie had another package of hamburger to take out and let her out. This is a flagrant mix of fact and fiction and I hope you enjoyed it.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
I don’t know how many of you are bakers out there, but me I love making a good pie. While I tend to stick for the basic tools, there have been a lot invented over the years to try to make the process easier. When you make a fruit pie one of the dangers is that you will have too much juice and the pie will boil over. The juice is part of the pie baking that is an art, not a science and unexpected boilings over can occur especially if there was a lot of liquid inside the fruit used as filling to begin with. If this falls down onto your oven during baking it is normally cooked on before you get a chance to clean it. It’s then incredibly hard to get off. What we normally use is an oven saver which sits under the…
YouTube has created an easier way to find your YouTube channel – at least they think it’s easier. My YouTube channel is Trundlebed Tales. It started long enough ago that I actually nabbed Trundlebed Tales as the name of the channel and the URL. YouTube has just told me that they’ve given me a handle @TrundlebedTales so you can search for that to find me. (You really want to search for YouTube @TrundlebedTales because I have a lot of handles if you just search for handle.)
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Sarah's Notebook 