Author: jmsh2016

Besides reading and writing books and stories, my other favorite thing to do is gardening. I see gardening and writing books as similar creative endeavors. I often think up story ideas when I’m outside close to nature digging in the dirt.

When I write a new book, I begin with a blank page on my computer. When I create a new garden, I begin with an empty plot of dirt. For me, the challenge of creating something interesting and beautiful out of nothing is incredibly exciting!

Writing involves stringing words together into a coherent story. With so many thousands of words to choose from, it’s no wonder there are so many great books on the market! Gardening is similar. There are so many plants to choose from and so many possible combinations in a garden. I love to go to plant nurseries and look at all the different plants before I decide which ones to buy.

A year ago, when we moved to our new home in Indiana, I was disappointed to find that one of the previous owners had surrounded the house with rocks. I understand the appeal of low maintenance landscaping, but I couldn’t believe that not one space was left open for a garden. Who doesn’t want flowers in their yard?

My short-term solution has been to garden in pots…not to be confused with pot gardening! For now, I have geraniums, zinnias and cone flowers growing in pots as well as some tomato and pepper plants. I plan to begin clearing the rocks from a couple of spots in our yard this fall so that I might plant a nice flower garden next spring.

I come from a long line of gardeners in my family. As a child, I used to plant flower seeds with my grandmother and with my mom. They would talk to me about first preparing the soil and then dropping the seeds just so far apart to allow for room for future growth. We would water the flower beds together and watch as they grew from tiny sprouts into stems with buds and then into beautiful flowers.

What a lesson it was in preparation and planning and patience and in the joy of anticipation! In our world of instant gratification, we are forgetting how rewarding it can be to plan for and think about and wait for things to happen.

Both of my grandmothers and my mom loved to be outdoors gardening and tending to their yards. They understood how good it was for the soul to be close to nature. From them both, I learned to love it too. Besides making the space around us more beautiful, gardening is a time for quiet reflection and stress reduction. It’s also been suggested that quieting the mind while gardening can enhance creativity by creating space for new ideas to emerge.

Speaking of nature, something I heard about recently is the concept of “earthing” or “grounding”. Have you heard of it? Earthing is walking barefoot on grass, sand or dirt…basically having direct contact with the earth without any synthetic materials (such as shoes) between us and Mother Earth.

The idea is that earthing reconnects your body to the Earth’s natural electric charge, which is believed to have antioxidant properties. People who believe in the benefits of earthing say it can potentially benefit our health by reducing inflammation, stress, pain, and can also improve sleep. I’ll bet gardening would qualify as earthing. I always feel better after I garden and dig and plant in the dirt. I guess I’ve been earthing for a long time!

I heard voices from the past this week. Voices of family members who have passed, on a cassette tape. It was both comforting and difficult to listen to them. As the tape rolled, I had to step away and walk outside a few times because I felt myself getting emotional and missing them so much. The people who shaped my young life. The ones I loved with all my heart.

The cassette tape was in a Ziploc bag with a few others that I found last year when I was cleaning out my parents’ house after my mom died. Of course, I laughed when I saw that Mom had saved several cassette tapes. She used to like to record them. Upon closer inspection, I saw that they held conversations with family members. I was only on one tape…well actually, two. I was also on an answering machine tape she had saved where I got to hear my dad’s voice again along with that of my Aunt Edie. On that tape, there was an answering machine message from me to my mom saying I had just called to chat. Boy, did I ever sound young.

As I listened, alone in my sunroom, it felt as if I was transported back to May of 1988 and was sitting at my kitchen table in Kalamazoo, Michigan with my mom and my grandfather. I was 27 years old and a new mom. We were having coffee and talking and laughing. My mom was smoking. I could hear her light cigarettes and take puffs while she talked. I could almost smell her cigarette smoke and see it swirling above our heads at the table.

I don’t know why we made the tape. It was long, over an hour. I asked several questions about things from the past so maybe we were just documenting family history for posterity. Since I was a new mom, they told me stories from when I was a baby and a little girl. Apparently, my grandfather had bought us our first color TV back in the mid-1960’s and he said he bought it so I could watch Saturday morning cartoons.  He said he wanted me to be able to watch cartoons in color.  I remember sitting on the living room rug right in front of that TV watching Underdog, The Jetsons, and The Road Runner Show. (For those of you who get the reference, you’ll notice in the picture that there’s an “I Dream of Jeannie” bottle on top of that color TV!)

They also told stories about when my mom was a little girl. She used to go to the barber shop with my grandfather every Saturday. He said, “Saturday was haircut day and there would be a line of men waiting to get their hair cut.” My mom said she used to be so bored waiting, but she wanted to spend the time with her dad. I was surprised that men used to get their hair cut every week!

I asked about my mom’s older sister, Fay, who had died at age four in 1941 after a bout with scarlet fever. The country doctor had given her a blood transfusion without making sure it was the right blood type, and it had killed her. Times have certainly changed. I asked my grandfather if it still made him sad. He said, “If you study about it too much, it gets to you.”

I had forgotten how he had talked until I heard the tape. Studying about it was thinking about it. Trading at the A & P meant shopping at the A & P. That puts me in mind of meant that makes me think of something. He said, Some people can’t hep it which meant some people can’t help it. He grew up on a farm in Tennessee. Maybe it was Southern speak. I was very close to my grandfather and I used to love the way he talked.

They talked about music and about playing old 78 rpm records on a victrola. They talked about listening to the Grand Ole Opry out of Nashville on the radio on Saturday nights. At one point, they got into a discussion about some of their favorite old-time country singers. My grandpa liked Roy Acuff and songs like “Wabash Cannonball” and “The Great Speckled Bird”. They both liked the music of Carl and Pearl Butler from the 1950’s and 1960’s. I wasn’t familiar with the music of the Butler’s so I asked them to sing one of their songs. My Mom began to sing “Don’t Let Me Cross Over” and my grandpa whistled the melody as she sang. It was magical.

And soon after that, they had to head back home an hour away to Elkhart. Our wonderful visit was over, and the tape ended.  Some people and times in our lives were so good that we don’t realize just how good they were until they’re gone. We all have people who are no longer here that we miss. I sat there in the silent sun room with their voices echoing in my head and cried.

Occasionally, at book signings, someone will come up to my table and see my book and ask, “What is a button box?” Sometimes, I will have my family button box with me and I can show them. It seems that people either had a family button box and know what they are or they’ve never heard of them before.

Years ago, every household had a button box.  In the days before we had a store on every corner, people made their own clothing, and buttons were used over and over on new garments. When old clothing was worn out, the buttons would be removed and placed in the family button box to be reused at another time.  Think of it as an early version of recycling.

A button box is simply a container for storing your buttons.  People kept their buttons in all sorts of containers, and these were often passed down through the generations.  Many people used tins for their buttons like my family did, but I’ve also heard of a lot of people using glass jars such as Mason or Ball Jars, old cigar boxes, wood boxes, metal boxes, bags, and baskets. 

My family’s button box was originally an old fruitcake tin.  “Chicago” is stamped on the bottom of the tin.  This makes sense because my great-grandmother’s family came from Sweden and settled in Chicago. 

Many people have fond memories like I do of going through their family button box with a beloved mother or grandmother.  As I say in my book, my mother and I had a familiar ritual for going through our button box.  We would search for our favorite buttons first, and then we would pick out the familiar ones that had come from our clothing.  Next, we would go through the button box and find other interesting buttons and wonder about the clothing they were on.  To this day, I still love to put my hands in the button box and feel the cool buttons against my warm skin. I guess because it makes me think of those special times with my mom.

Since the publication of my book in 2014, lots of people have shared stories about their family button boxes with me.  After they buy my book, people will often find their family button box and send me pictures. Many of these family boxes held more than just buttons.  A lot of them were jam-packed full of other treasures too! 

In the past, button boxes seemed to be a catch-all for the small trinkets and doodads that people wanted to keep. I’ve been given several button boxes by families who didn’t want theirs and I’ve been delighted by the variety of items stored in them. Besides buttons, some of the things I’ve found in the boxes are keys, barrettes, screws, coins, bullets, keyrings, bits of lace, thimbles, beads, earrings, nails, marbles, sewing needles, matches, dice, rubber bands, chalk, seashells, clothes pins, bobby pins, pictures, Girl Scout pins, rocks and stones, guitar picks, brooches, safety pins, typewriter erasers, diaper pins, locks, buckles, hat pins, paper clips, magnets, small chains, tape measures, wooden spools, watches, chalk, Christmas ornament hooks, hair bows, military patches, medals, and crochet hooks.  All these items would find a home in button boxes, and they would turn into treasure boxes!

In today’s modern world, fabric and hobby stores now sell new containers for buttons and other sewing notions.  However, many people still have and treasure their old family button boxes.

Here’s an exerpt from my book, “The Button Box”:

The button box was filled with hundreds of buttons of every size, shape and color. As a child, I used to wonder where they all came from, and I imagined a lot of people walking around with buttons mising from their clothing. Sometimes my mother would look through the button box to replace missing buttons on our clothes. At those times, I used to worry that the buttons would all be used up, but over the years the button box remained full.

Order your signed copy of “The Button Box” today! https://www.janetseverhull.com/product/the-button-box-signed-copy-17-reviews-copy/

Growing up in Indiana, I was always excited about Memorial Day Weekend.  I didn’t exactly understand what the holiday was about, but I knew that it was finally warm enough for everyone to open their pools and there would be a family cookout where I could see my cousins and other relatives.  And of course, the big race, the Indianapolis 500, would be on TV.

As I grew older, my mother began taking me with her to Rice Cemetery on the Saturday before Memorial Day.  We would rake and clean the winter debris off the graves of family members and plant new flowers or leave an artificial arrangement.   While we worked, I would stop and look out across the very large cemetery and see people tidying the grave sites of their loved ones.  When we finished our tasks, my mother would stand back and say, “I sure do miss them.”

After I became an adult and more family members had passed on, our annual trek involved visits to two cemeteries in my hometown.  My grandmother, my mother’s mother, died in November of 2001.  On the following Memorial Day Weekend, my mother and I went to plant flowers on her grave.  When we got there, we found a big chunk of firewood right in front of her headstone.  (Wish I had a picture of it but that was back in 2002 before we carried cell phone cameras with us everywhere.) My mother fussed, “Now who would put that on someone’s grave” and she promptly threw it into the closest trash can.  Later, at the family cookout, she was complaining to my brother about finding that big piece of firewood on her mother’s grave.

My brother’s face broke into a big smile and said, “I put that there.”  My mother was speechless for a moment before she asked him why in the world, he would do that.  He said, “I always told grandma I would make sure she had firewood for her wood burning fireplace in the winter.  I put that firewood on her grave when the weather turned cold to keep my promise to her.”

While today, we remember all our loved ones who have died, Decoration Day was originally created to remember and honor those who died in military service to our country.  It was renamed “Memorial Day” and declared a federal holiday in 1967, but its origins and customs go all the way back to the American Civil War. 

The Civil War lasted for four years, from 1861 – 1865, and during this time over 600,000 men from both sides were killed in combat.  Women, in the north and in the south, began spontaneously decorating the graves of their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons to honor their ultimate sacrifice to our country and as a way of expressing their grief.

In 1868, General John A. Logan, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, declared that “Decoration Day” would be observed every May 30th to commemorate all the soldiers who died in the Civil War.  That first Decoration Day, the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D. C. were decorated with flowers and wreaths.  In 1968, Congress changed Memorial Day from May 30th to the last Monday in May so that people might have a three-day holiday weekend. 

In the United States, flags are placed on the veterans’ graves every year, a few days before Memorial Day. This is done by armies of volunteers from the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, American Legion, and Veterans of Foreign Wars. Flags are typically placed one foot in front of the headstone and centered.

My parents are buried at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery because my dad is an Army veteran. A year ago, right before we moved from Texas to Indiana, I visited the cemetery. I was so pleased and proud to see all the flags decorating the graves of the veterans there, including my dad’s!

I feel like I’ve come full circle because I moved from Texas back to Indiana a year ago, and it’s almost Memorial Day Weekend. Since I don’t live in my hometown, I won’t be visiting the cemeteries this year. I will, however, put my flag out and remember the people I love who are gone, including my brother, Jeff, who was also an Army veteran and who died way too soon and only four years after he put that piece of firewood on our grandmother’s grave so she would stay warm in the winter.

Something to know about writers is that most of us are also avid readers. Many of us discovered books early in life and have never stopped reading. For me, writing is a way of sharing the stories in my head with others, but it’s also (hopefully) a vehicle for helping children learn to love books and to be a life-long reader.

I was the kid who always had a book in my hand, no matter where I was. I got into trouble for reading when I was supposed to be getting ready for school or doing my chores or sleeping at night. Yep, all the time. When I visited my grandparents’ farm, I would climb into the hay loft of the barn with a book or to the top of a tall apple tree so I could read uninterrupted. My grandmother would often come to the apple orchard and look up into the trees to see which tree I was reading in and make sure I was all right.  

My parents put in a swimming pool when I was 11 and, in the summers, I would read with my book on the side of the pool. One day, I was sitting on the diving board reading “Gone with the Wind” when my younger brother snuck up on me and jumped hard on the diving board. The book and I both landed in the water and my book has wavy pages to this day!

When I became a mother, I read to each of my children from the time they were tiny babies. I remember reading to my youngest child, Anna, at night before bed and then finding her older brothers sitting in the hallway outside her bedroom listening to the story too. They could read by then but still wanted to listen.

When my boys were nine and seven years old, I read them the entire first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” I tripped over many of the names and told them that if that author (J.K. Rowling) ever wrote a sequel, they would have to read it themselves! As you can imagine, all my children have read all the Harry Potter books.

During the years that my children were in school at Angling Road in Portage, Michigan, I was a reading tutor for first grade students, and I also volunteered in the school library. Back then, I didn’t know that I would be writing books for children one day or that there would be a painting of Angling Road Elementary on the cover of one of my books!

As an author, I’ve had the pleasure of reading to children at schools and libraries for the last ten years. It’s been fun seeing children look for buttons on their clothing when I’ve read “The Button Box” and hearing them giggle when I read about the antics of Pretty Boy in “Which Came First?” or Tom, the turkey in “The Day the Turkey Came to School.”

I’m a big supporter of libraries and I donate books whenever I’m asked to read at a library. I’ve also sent books to libraries in my hometown and my children’s hometown as well as libraries such as the Ferguson Municipal Public Library in Ferguson, Missouri during the time of unrest in 2014 and to the El Progreso Memorial Library after the shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in 2022. Every single library has sent me a lovely thank you note or letter.

I believe that books and libraries are a great source of comfort and entertainment for many people. I especially love the Little Free Libraries that are sprinkled across our country, and I’ve contributed to many of them over the years. When I lived in Texas, I used to ride my bicycle to donate books to a Little Free Library near my house. Now, I have one just a short walk away in the neighborhood where I live. I donate my books as well as books by other authors on a regular basis.

The school year is almost over, and children will be looking for fun things to do and for great books to read this summer.  If you have books you no longer need and are willing to donate, you can look up a Little Free Library near you with this map:  https://littlefreelibrary.org/map/ and encourage young readers and perhaps, future writers!

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”~Stephen King

The year I was turning 50, I suddenly began receiving AARP mailings. I was quite offended and would quickly take them to the recycling bin while muttering under my breath the entire time. I’m not old yet. Good grief.

So, this year, I’m turning 65 and have been receiving all the Medicare mailings for the last six or seven months. Instead of muttering under my breath, I’m a bit more vocal saying “I get it, I’m turning 65…now would you please stop mailing this stuff to me.” I’m not old yet!

I remember my mom laughing really hard years ago about me being so offended by the AARP mailings. I wish I could call her now and complain about all the Medicare mailings so I could hear her laugh again.

I did meet with a Medicare expert last week. Her presentation was interesting and informative. I learned a lot that I didn’t know. She even told me I was a young 64, almost 65. (That didn’t help.) How on earth could I possibly be old enough to have to deal with all this stuff?

One day during the years that I cared for my parents, we were sitting at their kitchen table drinking coffee, and I asked them how old they felt mentally. They both said that in their minds, they felt like they were in their late 30’s or maybe early 40’s. My dad said, “I feel young in my mind, but I don’t know how my body has gotten so old!”

Just like the annual seasons and the changes they bring, we all go through the different seasons of our lives. These seasons bring different changes for us. Some, like grandchildren and retirement, and time to travel, are joyful changes. Others, like health issues and losing people dear to us, not so much.

We recently had a visit from some old friends. I’ve known them for almost 40 years. When we first met, we had new babies and both couples were in the season of learning to be parents, and all our parents were still living. Now, we each have grandchildren and are either retired or near retirement age.  We are learning to be grandparents, and we are discovering what our lives after our careers will look like.

It’s interesting how much our conversations have changed and also how much they have stayed the same. We still talk about our children and our families, where we have traveled or intend to travel, and how we try to stay healthy. We talk about the books we’ve read and the movies we’ve seen. We still share good recipes and talk about new foods we’ve tried and restaurants we like. Now, however, we also talk about medical issues and the friends and family we miss who are gone from our lives. We talk about the kind of exercise we get and the medicines and supplements we take. It’s different but it’s also the same. It’s comforting to have friends who have known us in the different seasons of our lives and who have gone through them with us.

While our friends were visiting, we went on a hike at a local Nature Preserve. Maybe we weren’t as quick as we used to be, but we sure enjoyed the time together out in nature. I might have been a little sore the next day, but I’m not old yet!

Happy Mother’s Day Weekend to all the moms out there. This is my second Mother’s Day without my own mom and I miss her so very much!

One of my earliest memories is of a May 1^st in the 1960’s. We lived on a county road in Northern Indiana and my grandmother, my mother’s mother, lived on the next county road over. I must have been four years old or younger because my brother hadn’t been born yet.

My mom cut a bouquet of purple irises and daffodils and other flowers from our yard and wrapped them in a damp newspaper.  (That would be difficult to do today since most people no longer have a newspaper subscription.) She told me it was a tradition to give flowers to people you love on May Day, and we were going to take the bouquet to Grandma and surprise her.

We drove to my grandmother’s farmhouse in Mom’s 1957 green Chevy and pulled off the driveway and into the carport on the right side of the house so Grandma wouldn’t see our car. We quietly snuck up to the front porch and laid the bouquet of fragrant flowers in front of the door. Then Mom knocked (because Grandma didn’t have a doorbell) and we quickly moved to the corner of the house to watch her find the flowers.

Grandma opened the door and then peeked out of the storm door at the bouquet on the porch. She stepped out and picked it up with a big smile on her face. She said, “I know you’re here somewhere.” At that point, we started giggling and we were discovered. I loved seeing the happiness on Grandma’s face when she saw the flowers and then saw the two of us. We exchanged hugs and then went inside for a visit while Grandma put her beautiful bouquet of flowers in a Mason Jar on the kitchen table.

Not so long ago when my own daughter, Anna, was in college, she did the same thing on May Day. She arrived at my door with a bouquet of flowers. After she surprised me, she came in and we had coffee and visited.  She came over for no reason at all except to see me and to bring me flowers.  Now THAT was a good day.  Not only did her actions make me feel loved, but I was also delighted that she remembered a story I had told her when she was growing up.

Time with the people you love is not an infinite resource.  Since my mom passed a year and a half ago, I have thought of at least a million conversations I’d like to have with her. I miss her and I miss my grandmother too. I wish I could send them both flowers in heaven.

Today, in honor of my mom, my grandmother and May Day, I planted some flowers in pots. They were both gardeners and could grow anything. Of course, I thought of them while I tended to the flowers. Happy May Day!

One Saturday morning a few weeks ago, our daughter-in-law dropped off three of our grandchildren to spend the day with us.  As you can imagine, their energy came rushing through the door as soon as they arrived.

I was talking with my six-year-old granddaughter, Hallie, about what we would do that day, when I heard a loud squeal from four-year-old Nolan, who was standing in our center hallway.  It seemed there were rainbows everywhere and he was very excited about seeing them!

“Wook Grandma, wook at all the rainbows!”

Our front door has a sidelight with beveled lead glass on either side. On sunny mornings when the sun shines through the glass just right, it projects rainbows on our wall, our wood floor and on the carpet on our stairway.

I had scarcely noticed them many times, but that day I stopped and admired each one with Nolan. Such a simple thing and it brought him so much joy.

At Easter, when the other children were running to gather Easter eggs in the backyard, Nolan got sidetracked by a ladybug on one of our steppingstones.

“Grandma, wook at the ladybug!”

After the egg hunt, Nolan was eager to explore the backyard. He tried to climb the bottom branches of the crab apple tree, he made friends with the great-grandchildren who were visiting next door, he went underneath our giant Norway Spruce trees to explore, and he admired the bird nest on our pergola.  Inside the house, Nolan discovered the Roomba floor cleaner and excitedly asked if he could play with the “robot” and was delighted to follow its journey around the family room.

Before it was time for them to go home, Nolan asked if they could do a sea creature hunt. I have a bag of rubber sea creatures that I hide for the children to find. As his brother and sister scurried around outside trying to find as many as possible, Nolan found an alligator and was mesmerized by the squeaking sound it made when he squeezed it. He didn’t care how many sea creatures he found because he had found the one that was the most fun!

For Nolan, everything is new and exciting and fascinating. I want to see the world through his eyes with the same sense of wonder. I want to notice every detail and savor the moments like he does. Watching Nolan’s approach to life has been such a sweet reminder from a four-year-old.

During the past week since Easter, my eyes and heart have been wide open to the wonder around me. I’ve been noticing the rainbows on the floor in the mornings. Each day, I’ve smelled the Easter Lilly blooms, and I’ve gone outside to see if the mama bird is on the nest in our pergola. I’ve noticed the blossoms on our crab apple tree, the smell of the grass and the new growth on the Norway Spruce trees. One day, I walked underneath the Norway Spruce trees to explore. And last evening, I saw a ladybug on one of our patio chairs.

In addition to our religious celebrations this time of year, at Easter we celebrate springtime and the rebirth of the Earth after the long winter.  Easter and springtime are times of renewal and fresh starts. 

When my son was a little boy…maybe four or five, he asked me, “Mama, why do we have holidays?”  At the time, I told him holidays were our way of celebrating things and that they gave us something to look forward to with our families and friends. 

Now that I’ve had a few more years to think on it, I’ve decided that holidays are so much more.  Life itself can be difficult and pretty mundane at times.  We all have things we have to do that aren’t fun.  Holidays break up the monotony of life and give us things to look forward to and things to plan for, and to talk about with others. They also give us a chance to reconnect with family members we may not get to see very often.

Holidays like Easter, provide us the opportunity to both honor and celebrate our religious beliefs as well as to be with and enjoy our families. The traditions around the various holidays give us all something to look forward to and to expect.  When I was newly married, I remember thinking about the different holiday traditions my family practiced when I was growing up and deciding which ones to incorporate into my own family. 

Sometimes our holiday traditions are passed down through our families…my grandmother’s and my mother’s crazy good banana pudding is a holiday staple in our family.  Other times, traditions are created by unique experiences we share with people. 

Sometimes people have really funny stories about how their family traditions came about. When my children were growing up, we would color Easter Eggs every year.  Once the coloring was done, we would dump the colored egg dyes into the toilet and watch the different colors swirl together into new colors. The kids enjoyed that part so much the first year, that it became a tradition we did every year!

My son who asked that question about holidays so long ago, is married now with four children of his own.  He and his wife have borrowed their favorite traditions from each of their birth families and have also established their own new family traditions.  We will get to be with them this Easter. I have a large bag of plastic Easter eggs that I’ve saved since my children were small. I’m going to fill them with candy and coins and set up an Easter egg hunt for my grandchildren. Hopefully, that will be the beginning of a new tradition at my house that they will look forward to every Easter!

One of my favorite tasks that comes with being a self-published author, is choosing the covers for my books. It helps that I work with an incredible team. My friend, Vicki Killion Guess, paints incredible illustrations that we pull from for each cover, and then my friend and graphic designer, Crystal Wood, does her design magic which pulls it all together. I have been so pleased with all my book covers and I credit the talents of these two women.

Usually, as the three of us are working on each book, I have a vague idea in my head for what I want on the cover. I brainstorm with Vicki about the cover picture and then once that is painted, Crystal adds the finishing touches and gives me some book cover options.

For “The Button Box” I knew I wanted a picture of the actual button box on the cover. Originally, the painted buttons next to it were generic buttons and my daughter, Anna, said, “Why aren’t you using actual buttons from the button box on the cover?” Smart girl. Vicki then added buttons from inside the button box (such as the Lincoln button) to the cover picture. It was Crystal’s idea to wrap the button box around the spine of the book and onto the back cover. It was also her idea to use the checked background for the book. I loved it. Here is one version I considered and the final cover.

Since my second book, “Which Came First?” was a farm story, I knew all along that I wanted a picture of the barn from the story on the cover. Vicki sketched and painted the barn, and then Crystal added the chicken wire in the background and the words to the front. I was delighted with it! Of all my books, that was the easiest cover to decide on.

“The Day The Turkey Came To School” was based on a true story that happened at my children’s elementary school in Portage, Michigan, so I gave Vicki an actual photo of the school…Angling Road Elementary. She painted the school for the book cover, then added the tree, car, school bus and the turkey right in the center, since the entire story centers on him.

With each book cover, my goal is to give the reader a sneak peek of what is inside the book. “The Button Box” is a more serious story and I believe the cover reflects that seriousness. “Which Came First?” and “The Day The Turkey Came To School” are both funny stories and the illustrations and book covers are more whimsical by design. You will notice that Crystal added fun images on the spines of all three books…a button, an egg, and turkey footprints.

I didn’t know what kind of cover I wanted for “The Halloween Scare” until the book was almost finished. With so many characters in the story, I couldn’t figure out what kind of cover would reflect the type of book it was. I finally asked Vicki if there was a way she could make a frame for the cover and add in the characters in the order they appeared in the book. She came up with the frame and we both thought it was perfect!

I knew I wanted a blue background to indicate a night sky for Halloween. We darkened the color a bit and Crystal added the ghostly white background in the center and the spooky title font and we had our cover. Here’s the original color of the cover and then the final cover. I think the darker background does a better job of enhancing the cover artwork.

I have six published books and I’ve only had trouble deciding on the cover for one of them. “The Christmas Church” was my first book for adults and all I knew was that I wanted a red Christmasy looking cover and I wanted the Christmas church on it. Crystal did so many covers for me that I’m surprised she is still my friend to this day. Here are some of the 12 covers I considered and then the final cover…which I love!

Crystal added the snowflake print on top of the red cover and the white lettering seemed like a no brainer. She also added a wreath to the spine of the book. Although the illustrations in the book are done in watercolor paints, the colors are still vibrant, so I think the pretty red cover works very well with the rest of the book.

For my most recent book, “Love Hearts” we considered using several of the inside illustrations for the cover but ultimately I decided I wanted more of the frame idea that we used for “The Halloween Scare.” It’s a happy, whimsical cover that reflects the story inside very well. Here is the light purple cover I considered before settling on light blue for the background color.

I’ve heard there are cover rules such as green book covers don’t sell but I don’t really believe that…do you? (Think “The Giving Tree.”) I also like to have attractive back covers and I’ve included some of mine for you to see. I think the real goal is to create an aesthetically pleasing cover that does a great job of introducing the story inside. I’m very satisfied that I’ve been able to do that so far. Tell me, do you judge a book by its cover?