Children's
A Singular Peluche
by Barbara Rogers Jolovitz
Illustrated by Michael Boardman
by Barbara Rogers Jolovitz
Illustrated by Michael Boardman
A loving bedtime story told by a teddy bear.
A student of Julia Child and Jacques Pépin’s television
teachings, I prepared myself for catering, teaching adult education cooking
classes and doing food demonstrations in gourmet shops.
In my 76th year, totally new to the world of book writing, I wrote Reminiscences and Recipes, (North Country Press, 2012) which was entered in the 2013 Maine Literary Awards in the “John N. Cole Award for Maine-Themed Nonfiction.” Since then, I have collaborated with Ken Walsh, CEO of the Alfond Youth Center in Waterville on Behold the Turtle, (North Country Press, 2014). Turtle is the history of YMCA Camp Tracy, founded by my late husband Lester and two other Waterville men. Turtle witnesses this invasion into its domain when the men want to see if the land would be suitable for a children’s camp. The story is in the voice of the turtle. A Singular Peluche is the result of a magical happening when the heart opens up to an inanimate object, like a little teddy bear, waiting to be picked up and loved. My family includes my children, Karl and Deborah; grandsons Ben, Will and Nicky; and what Ken calls my Bubbe world ― loving, caring people for whom I have become their Bubbe, their grandmother. |
I recently told my children I bought a little teddy bear in
Goodwill, named him Peluche which is French for teddy bear, and placed him in a
wooden bowl on a shelf by the computer so he could see all that was going on in
the kitchen and den where I spend most of my time.
I wrote a short bedtime story as a way of introducing my teddy bear to children, a teddy bear with a gentle loving message that they, like Peluche, are singular and loved. Among the stories is how Peluche deals with grandparents with ethnic grandparent names and the reality that the death of a grandparent does not mean the end of loving that grandparent. It talks about cooking aromas stirring up memories of another time in Peluche’s life and how cookies are baked and shared. Peluche’s visit ends with bidding a child a sweet sleep and a hug. Barbara Rogers Jolovitz 
Michael
Boardman is an artist and illustrator specializing in wildlife and natural history
subjects. When not drawing, he runs Coyote Graphics, a screenprinting company
that markets his wildlife images on shirts and cards. In addition to being an
illustrator, he is a watercolor painter and has been awarded residencies at
Baxter State Park and Acadia National Park.
Maine has been his home since the age of seven. He graduated from the University of Maine and is happy to be raising his own family here. |
