The Teddy Bear Contest children’s book set at Tuscarawas County Fair

  • By Teri Stein
  • August 22, 2010
  • 422
                        
The Tuscarawas County Fair has provided the back drop for a new children’s book, The Teddy Bear Contest, by Ruth Mugridge Snodgrass of Dover. Snodgrass’ first children’s book, The Magical Merry-Go-Round, used Tuscora Park as its setting. In the story a young girl takes her teddy bear to a contest at the county fair. She meets 4-H members who encourage her, in addition to two boys who make fun of her bear. The girl sees many unusual bears and learns about the comforts of owning a teddy bear before the winner is announced. Snodgrass, 82, took the story from the song, The Teddy Bear Contest, which she had written about 20 years ago. “After I retired, I had a period that was so creative. Ideas were waking me up in the middle of the night wanting to be written down,” said Snodgrass, a former teacher of high school English, French, speech, and dramatics. She is also the author of two memoirs, Dark Brown is the River, and On Goes the River: the Somerset Years. In the book, six 4-H members and their animals are represented in the drawings in the book. Once again, Snodgrass teamed with illustrator Catherine Fithian of Navarre who did the illustrations in The Magical Merry-Go-Round. The two attended last year’s Tuscarawas County Fair to take photographs on which the colorful pencil drawings were based. 4-H members and their animals depicted in the book are Shelby Thompson and her lamb, Rosemary; Alli Serban and her rabbit, Skip; Barbi Boyd and her pygmy goat, Jasper; Lydia Stockert and her Black Angus steer, Buddy; Reed Anderson and his Suffolk lamb, Flo; and Andy Kreinbihl and his Boer lamb, Dottie. Also pictured are Austin Eckhart, Jared Shepherd, and a young girl, Kate Vranich, and her mother, Darlene. Several other friends and relatives of Snodgrass and Fithian appear as spectators and judges in the drawings. Even a drawing of a quilt made by Fithian’s grandmother appears on one page. “There are a lot of little details in the pictures that have meaning for us,” said Snodgrass. The book is being printed by Gordon Printing. Snodgrass and Fithian formed their own publishing company, Stony Creek books, which gave them control over the editing and other choices but required them to invest their own money to pay for the cost of printing. Snodgrass is hoping the new book does as well as their first venture published in 2008. “We sold over 500 copies of The Magical Merry-Go-Round. People were sending them to their grown children who loved Tuscora Park,” she said. “A lot of people talked about recognizing Dave Miller (longtime Merry-Go-Round operator who was in one of the drawings in the book.)” “Kids at the park picked out the horses on the Merry-Go-Round from the drawings,” said Fithian, a retired administrator in the juvenile attention system. She now teaches private and group art lessons in North Canton. The first signing for The Teddy Bear Contest will be held on Sunday September 12 at the North Star Clubhouse from 2 to 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served. The books will sell for $20.00; a portion of the cost will be donated to 4-H, the Strasburg United Methodist youth group, and ALS. The Teddy Bear Contest will also be on sale at the Tuscarawas County Fair, September 20 – 26, in the Merchants and Commercial Building.


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