Lester L. Laminack

From: The Sylva Herald
Feb. 26, 2004
Volume 78, No. 48

Saturdays and Teacakes opens 'trap door' to past
By Carey King

As a boy growing up in 1960s Alabama, Lester
Laminack didn't think he could be a writer.

"I didn't know that was an option. I never thought about it," he said. "We never had a writer come to our school. We had magicians, and Gideons bringing Bibles, but we never had an author come." ...

To outsiders, the journey from 10-year-old with a poem-filled notebook to adult with five or six book drafts in an editor's drawer may appear to be quite a jump, but for Laminack, the change hasn't been that drastic.

Professor and head of Elementary and Middle Grades Education at Western Carolina University, Laminack speaks at literacy conferences and is consultant to schools throughout the country. He's authored numerous guides for teachers and already has two children's books out, Trevor's Wiggly-Wobbly Tooth and The Sunsets of Miss Olivia Wiggins.

"I've always liked to write," Laminack said. "I like to keep a notebook to make note of my noticings."

Over the years, Laminack has gotten in the habit of carrying a green hardbound journal to keep track of quotes that he's heard, observations he's made, or ideas he's had.

Yet the leap from teacher and private writer to published author didn't come until a few years ago, when the professor realized there were few resources available to help his young son deal with his mother-in-law's battle with Alzheimer's.

"I thought, 'I could write something like that,'" Laminack said. "When people tap into their lives, they may not find a publishable story. But they'll find a way of sharing themselves with their children, of explaining their connections to things."

'Trap doors'

Eighty percent of what goes into Laminack's notebook never leaves it, he estimates. Writing about once a day, the author fills about three journals a year, plus a few tiny moleskin notebooks he keeps in his backpack for times away from his desk.

"Sometimes stories start as just notions or inklings," he said. "Then you take a few extra seconds to think. I call those moments 'trap doors.' Every human being has them."

For Laminack, the 'trap door' to Saturdays and Teacakes was a trip to Wal-Mart.

"I walked in and smelled cookies baking and thought, 'That reminds me of something.' It was just sort of this trigger that took me someplace," Laminack said.

When he realized that place was his grandmother's kitchen in Heflin, Ala., Laminack sat down and penned a six-page description of it.

Starting at age 9 or 10, Mammaw Thompson's kitchen was his destination each Saturday, once his mother decided he was "big enough" to ride his bike across town.

"That was before Interstate 20 was built. Heflin was a thriving little town with through-traffic from old Highway 78," Laminack said. "When I was on my bike, I was always sure somebody coming from Atlanta would mash me flat. I didn't trust people from the city."

Pushing his bike out of the garage early each Saturday morning, he would pedal his way past neighbors' houses, the gas station and the bank, ticking off each landmark before arriving at his grandmother's house. There, he'd mow the grass in exchange for good company, tomato sandwiches and a plate full of just-baked sugar cookies his Mammaw called "teacakes."

"It was a time in the world when it was very safe for children to be outside. When I started out, my mother would say, 'Call me when you get there,''' Laminack said. "I knew I had to stop at Chandler's gas station and look both ways, because my mother would hear about it if I didn't."

The story of that safe world - a time when a net of neighbors surrounded children on their journeys - is the one Laminack tells in Saturdays and Teacakes, both to honor his grandmother and to remind readers of the importance rituals play in children's lives.

"Every child deserves one human being in his or her life that makes them feel completely worthy, like my grandmother did for me," he said. "I would have walked across Egypt in the middle of August to get whatever she needed."

Everyone's lives are studded with rituals like those Saturday trips, Laminack says, whether they're vacations or birthdays or just day-to-day things that don't usually get noticed. But they're a powerful way for adults and children to connect, both in the doing and in the remembering.

Returning to roots

You have to write about your own experience for your stories to be effective, Laminack tells his students.

But in the children's book industry, the process of getting those stories illustrated can often be alienating.

"Usually, writers have no say in who illustrates their books," Laminack said. "The author might have a voice in things like the artist's style or palette of colors, but the publisher has the final choice."

Yet, in Chris Soentpiet - the illustrator for Saturdays and Teacakes - Laminack found an artist willing to travel through the 'trap door' with him.

"Chris called me up and asked if I could help him find a house in North Carolina like the one in the story for him to paint," Laminack said. "But then I told him I'd take him to see the real thing in Alabama."

Laminack's cousin now lives in Mammaw's old house, so Soentpiet drove down from New York to spend three days soaking up Heflin memories.

Though Soentpiet has worked on more than 15 children's books, Laminack is only the third author he's worked with face-to-face.

"We just took over my cousin's kitchen," Laminack said. "All the real things are still there. We just brought back things we'd inherited - like the cheese crock and the cookie jar - and put the modern things away."

Soentpiet beat Laminack to town by a few hours, so he stopped by Cleburn Elementary School to get a glimpse of the place Laminack had been both student and first-grade teacher. After introducing himself to the principal, he took a tour of the school and found a third-grader named Luke he imagined looked like Lami-nack growing up.

After a trip to the mall to outfit Luke, they swung by the grocery store to purchase Alabama products in the story like Golden Eagle syrup and Red Diamond coffee. Once Laminack's mother, who still lives in Cleburn County, came over dressed in an outfit from Mammaw's closet, Soentpiet was ready to get to work.

"He put them in all different poses from the book, and then took photographs," Laminack said. "Then he took those photos back to New York and painted from them."

The result is a series of realistic paintings true to Laminack's memories.

"I love the way Chris captures light. In the scene where the boy rests under the shade tree, I love the way the light and shadows dapple through the leaves," Laminack said.

Writers, not writing

The fact that Saturdays and Teacakes' words and pictures are accurate is critically important to the children with whom Laminack has shared the book.

Like his own distance as a child from the idea of adopting writing as a career, Laminack said, kids often create a gap between the writing they do in school and the writing that appears in books they read. Students are amazed when - after telling his grandmother's story from memory - Laminack whips out a copy of Saturdays and Teacakes to show that anybody with a good story can be an author.

"I say, 'My story happened on Saturdays. What do you do on Saturdays?'" Laminack said. "Then they just take off writing."

With one foot in the world of academia, Laminack knows students have end-of-grade assessments to pass that require writing from prompts and multiple-choice answers. But with the other foot planted in the classrooms of kindergartners through eighth-graders, Laminack is certain that the process of helping kids develop into writers is one deeper and richer than such tests can measure.

"We need to help kids develop a text-to-self connection," Laminack said. "We need to let them know that they too are writers. It's important for kids to keep their own writer's notebooks rather than writing through prompts."

You never know what's going to emerge when students take ownership of what they write and start to address issues they feel are important, Laminack said.

"I know there are assessments to worry about," the author said, "but I really trust that if we really try to develop writers rather than develop writing, kids can rise to the challenge."


Mammaw Thompson's Teacakes

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Gather these ingredients (Mammaw always used these brands, but you can substitute your own brands) :

2 sticks of Blue Bonnet Margarine
3-1/2 cups of Martha White self-rising flour
2 cups of Dixie Crystal Sugar
3 large eggs
3 teaspoons of vanilla flavoring
Blend margarine and sugar until creamy. Beat eggs and blend. Add vanilla, then flour, and blend. (You can blend the ingredients with a potato masher, then stir with a long wooden spoon.) Gather the mixture into a loose ball and sprinkle lightly with flour.

Lightly flour the surface you'll use for rolling, then roll out the dough.

Next remove about half of the dough onto the cutting surface and roll it out with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. Cut circles in the dough with a teacup, glass, or cookie cutter about 2-3 inches in diameter. (Dip the rim of the cup in flour between cuttings to prevent the dough from sticking.)

Place the circles on a baking sheet that has been lightly buttered or use a nonstick baking sheet. Set the cookies about 1 inch apart on all sides. Sprinkle sugar lightly over each cookie.

Repeat for the second half of the dough. (Refrigerate the dough if it will sit for more than ten minutes. Chilled dough is easier to roll out and cut.) This recipe should produce a batch of about 40 teacakes.

Place the cookies in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes. The cookies are done when they are lightly browned. Remove them from the oven and let them cool a little before you lift them off the baking sheet to eat them.

I hope you make Teacakes with someone you love very much. That's when they taste the very best.

From Saturdays and Teacakes, written by Lester L. Laminack and illustrated by Chris Soentpiet Peachtree Publishers: (800) 241-0113.