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Jan. 5, 2010
By Lori Lindner
NORTH LIBERTY LEADER
lori@northlibertyleader.com
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Author Jeanette Hopkins visited Penn Elementary School to share her children's book, The Ladybug Waltz," which was illustrated by art teacher Heidi Rittenhouse-Goeken, and published by local publishing house Ice Cube Press. Here, Penn students Lauren Maras and Carlie Schroeder "mingle and curtsy," acting out lyrics in the book and accompanying song.
(Lori Lindner) |
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NORTH LIBERTY- The ladybugs may be settled in for the winter, but they were recently still swarming at Penn Elementary School in North Liberty.
Actually, they were dancing.
Author and educator Jeanette Hopkins visited Penn on Dec. 1-2 to share her children's book, "The Ladybug Waltz," a book based on a lullaby Hopkins wrote for her granddaughter, Chloe McClure of Sioux City, as Chloe was undergoing one of five open-heart surgeries. "The Ladybug Waltz" is illustrated by Penn art teacher Heidi Rittenhouse-Goeken, and published by local publisher Steve Semken of Ice Cube Press.
As Hopkins visited Penn classrooms, she and her husband Bruce talked about Chloe's valve replacement procedures and surgeries to repair holes in her heart.
"I was rocking Chloe one day, and I noticed all these ladybugs on the window sill," Hopkins said. "I noticed they were...dancing"
In an imaginative interpretation of the arthropod assembly, Hopkins depicts the ladybugs as wearing crimson-colored gowns and glittering antenna tiaras, mingling and curtseying to beautiful music under a starry, indigo night sky. Penn students were treated to a reading of the book, listened to the audio performance and made their own "antenna tiaras" to wear and take home.
Hopkins wrote a rhythmic melody and rhyming lyrics, and sang them to Chloe, as a reassurance of the coming day. Soon, Hopkins had also put them together into book format. She asked Metropolitan Opera singer Jane Bunnell, accompanied by the Chicago Lyric Opera, to record the Ladybug Waltz song to a CD. The book and CD are available at Barnes & Noble Booksellers and at bookstores in Dubuque and Cedar Falls, as well as online through Ice Cube Press at www.icecubepress.com.
Hopkins is a National Board Certified teacher, an Iowa Writing Project participant and Advisory Board member and environmental writer from Sioux City.
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