I recall learning to read with a voracious appetite, devouring the Berenstein Bears, Amelia Bedelia, and Golden Books in my mother's lap. As I grew as a reader, I became a student of history, and child-sized biographies of great Americans grew in stacks along with me. I marveled at the struggles of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights movement, the successes of presidents like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, even the glory of famous athletes like Babe Ruth and Satchel Paige.
During this time, Paula Stark (Aunt Paula to me) was a fixture in my life, as the great figures of history were fixtures in my imagination. Though she lived six hours away--a lifetime to a child in the backseat of a Buick Regal--Aunt Paula and my mother would trade trips up and down Florida to see each other. These visits were always special; she and my Uncle Tim were like second parents and their son Nicholas ("Nick Nick") like a brother to me.
As we got older and life got busier, these trips became less and less frequent. But several years ago, during the summer before I moved to New York for college, my Aunt Paula invited me to come with her on a family trip to the mountains of North Carolina. While my cousins were off tubing nearby rapids, I sat on the shore of Lake Hiwassee with my aunt and my laptop beside me, as the story of Eleanor the Eagle was born. I was thrilled to be able to witness this new chapter of my aunt's life. Already a successful newspaper publisher, she had been a role model for an aspiring journalist like myself. On the shore of Lake Hiwassee, I was able to see the time and care with which Aunt Paula crafts her own introductions to the great figures of history for an even younger generation of readers. As a former members of her target audience, I am proud to have been there to view unseen sides of my role model emerge: a storyteller, an author, a lover of words.
