With Autumn comes an abundance of leaves. And with kids, there comes energy and imagination. In the new book Leaf Town Forever, authors Beth Rooney and Kathleen Rooney recount the creation of an imaginative village in the leaves.
"It was my kids who kind of helped found Leaf Town," says Beth Rooney. "They created these miniature worlds out of leaves and sticks - and their pure imagination - and the kids realized that the simplest forms and structures can create a really beautiful and magical world."
The story of the children and their imagined society is told through Haiku. The short poems on each page weren't the original plan, but the adjustment away from prose turned out to be the right choice. "It worked perfectly with the simplicity of Leaf Town. It just gave us that structure that we needed to keep the story brief and light and gave a lot of space to our beautiful, wonderful illustrator Betsy Bowen who did such an incredible job with imagining this world."
Leaf Town Forever can be found at most bookstores as well as online through the University of Minnesota Press website.
Minnesota Reads is produced at The North 103.3 with funding provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
