Author Wendy Ulmer is no stranger to local shores.
“We’ve been coming down since I was a little kid. I grew up in Pennsylvania and my parents brought us down to Dewey Beach for many, many years,” she said this week.
Coastal Point
Ulmer will be making an appearance at Bethany Beach Books on Friday, June 20, promoting her new children’s book, “A Isn’t for Fox: An Isn’t Alphabet.”
A high school teacher of English and music for 21 years in Bath, Maine, Ulmer said her book stemmed from an assignment she gave to a freshman English class.
“They weren’t writing with very much description, and I was trying to figure out a new way to approach it. So I challenged them to write some paragraphs describing things by what they were not. After they wrapped their heads around it, they wrote some pretty interesting pieces,” she said.
It wasn’t until sometime later that Ulmer developed the idea of an alphabet book based on words that did not begin with a certain letter.
“During a teachers’ meeting, “A Isn’t for Fox” popped into my head, and that was the start of it,” she recalled.
“A Isn’t for Fox” journeys from A to Z, but differs from the conventional alphabet book format of “A is for apple, B is for boy.” Instead, each letter is introduced using kid-friendly rhymes that give children examples of what each letter isn’t, before informing them what it is.
“A isn’t for box; it isn’t for fox. A is for ants that crawl over your socks.”
Out of the 26-letter alphabet, Ulmer has two favorites in her book.
“[My] favorite letter is D for dragon, because I’m a dragon freak and I collect dragons, but my favorite picture in the book is the turtles.”
The book comes to life with colorful, whimsical illustrations by Laura Knorr. Ulmer herself had “a little bit of input” when it came to adding pictures to her words.
“[The publishers] let me see what was happening all along the way and asked for suggestions once or twice, so it was nice,” she noted.
The mother of grown children, Ulmer welcomed their suggestions while writing the book.
“My oldest daughter, especially, will read my things sometimes and make suggestions. And she was a special-ed teacher for a while, so I value her opinion.”
The book is designed to appeal to children of all ages, and Ulmer said she is delighted to have created it.
“The book is a lot of fun, all the way from little kids just learning their alphabet letters and seeing the animals up to the older kids who have a higher level of thinking. Describing something by what it isn’t challenges them to look at things in a different way,” she added. “I think there’s nothing better than stretching a child’s mind.”
Wendy Ulmer has previously published “A Campfire for Cowboy Billy” (1997) with Rising Moon Books. “A Isn’t for Fox: An Isn’t Alphabet” was published in 2007 by Sleeping Bear Press. Ulmer will hold a book signing on Friday, June 20, at Bethany Beach Books, 99 Garfield Parkway in Bethany Beach. For more information on the signing, call (302) 539-2522 or 800-509-2384.