Madeline Island ABC Book written by Marcia Henry and illustrated by Sally Parsons $18.95 plus tax (WI) and shipping www.looncommonspress.com
"I found this book to be very appealing. Children will love finding all the hidden details in these great illustrations. It makes learning fun." -- Constance T. Ross, Director, Madeline Island Public Library
Madeline Island ABC Book also includes a brief history of Madeline Island, and ABC Island treasure hunt and an alphabet Madeline Island museum search.
Each page has many images for your children and grandchildren to identify. On B, for example, you can find a baby, a badger, some black bears, a biker, ball, balsam firs, a bikini, a beach, a bucket, a baby buggy, Basswood Island, blueberries, a butterfly, blue jay, a baby bottle, begonia, Eastern bluebird, blossoms, birch bark, bald eagle and boats.
Sally has been coming to the Island since early childhood. Her maternal grandmother, Effie Sherzer Taylor, inspired by a picture of a Madeline Island scene, had brought her adolescent children to explore in the summer of l931. They returned the following summer to purchase land and build a two story Norwegian pine log cabin. As her children matured and had families of their own, they all spent summers at their cabin. Sally took her turn, along with the other children, hauling up buckets of lake water, lighting kerosene lamps, and cooking on an old Franklin wood stove. Trips to the end of the Island for blocks of ice and smoked chub, swimming, fishing, rowing and berry picking as well as going to town for supplies from Mary and Dan Angus' grocery store were part and parcel of a summer spent on the Island. She credits The Lake, Madeline Island and her grandmother’s cabin with imprinting their beauty, nature and poetry on her senses – both psychic and physical. “This place, more than any other, is my creative touchstone.”
