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'From Prairies to Cornfields' exhibit to present Iowa children's authors

By Loren Keller

The world of literature is large and there’s room for everyone including authors of children’s and young adult books, says Iowa City novelist Jeremy Jackson.

The 1997 Iowa Writers Workshop graduate has written books for young adults as well as older readerships and feels comfortable in both spheres.

“Anybody who reads and loves books knows there are many, many books for children and young adults that are just fantastic and serious and funny and just as good as any book for adults,” says Jackson, who last two books, “Hot Lunch” and the Iowa City-set “24 Girls in 7 Days,” were written for young readers under the pen name Alex Bradley.

(For the record, Jackson says he didn’t use the pseudonym because he was ashamed or felt he was genre slumming, but wanted to signal to readers a clear distinction from his prior “adult” books including “Life at These Speeds” and “In Summer.”)

“I know a couple of other writers who graduated around the same time I did from the workshop who write for younger audiences but also write for older audiences,” Jackson says, a group that includes author Kevin Brockmeier. “I think among my generation of writers, people in their 30s, it’s completely acceptable to write in multiple genres and sort of experiment and find your own voices.”

Jackson will be one of several children’s and young adult book authors whose work will be part of a new exhibit called “From Prairies to Cornfields: Iowa’s Children’s Book Authors,” displayed at the University of Iowa Old Capitol Museum’s Discovery Center and the UI Museum of Natural History. The exhibit will showcase a selection of contemporary and past children’s book authors of Iowa.

“From Prairies to Cornfields” will open with a panel discussion at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10, followed by a public reception. The exhibit is planned in conjunction with the yearlong exhibition, "A Community of Writers: Creative Writing at the University of Iowa," at the Old Capitol Museum.

Sunday’s discussion will feature Jackson and fellow Iowa authors Tess Weaver, William Hossford and Michelle Edwards, who will talk about their writing experiences and the influences of living in Iowa. Deb Green, coordinator of children's services at the Iowa City Public Library, will moderate .

Shalla Wilson, assistant director of Pentacrest Museums, says the exhibit features authors who wrote in the late 1950s and early 1960s through the present.

“It’s kind of a hidden treasure,” Wilson said. “Iowa authors who have written children’s books and illustrated children’s books represent quite an array of different genres and different levels of reading.”

The authors, she said, are as diverse as the state they write about.

“Iowa is such a rich, diverse land,” Wilson said. “We have prairies, we have rivers, we have bluffs, we have cornfields, we have the Loess Hills on the western side. There are so many different ideas that these authors can pull from to help teach children about all the different things they see when they’re growing up in this area.”

Jackson, a native of Missouri who came to Iowa for graduate school and stayed put, said the young adult books he has written under the name Alex Bradley have been well received locally, especially the Iowa City-set “24 Girls in 7 Days.”

“It was fun to write about a town I know and love,” he says. “There are certainly teenagers around here who know that book and it gets passed around a lot. I hear librarians telling me all the time that those books are checked out. I think local teens really respond to that local connection. “

Jackson says he is happy to remain and write in Iowa.

“I can have as much peace and quiet and space to imagine as I want and yet Iowa City and Cedar Rapids are very vibrant communities,” he says. So I can sort of have the best of both worlds. I don’t want to live in New York or San Francisco. I like having this sort of quality of life you get here.”

A series of programmed events are scheduled for the spring including "Prairies to Cornfields Story Time." Story times will feature authors from Iowa, each reading from their most recent publication and discussing their writing process. Children of all ages are encouraged to attend.

Spring events also include the following:

--Sunday, Feb. 24, 3 p.m.: Jackson, reading from “Hot Lunch” and “24 Girls in Seven Days” and Claudia McGehee reading from “A Woodland Counting Book” and “A Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet,” Biosphere Discovery Hub, Museum of Natural History.

--Sunday, March 16, 3 p.m.: Michelle Edwards, reading from “Chicken Man” and “Stinky Stern Forever” and Maribeth Boelts reading from selected titles, Old Capitol Museum.

--Sunday, March 30, 3 p.m.: Jacqueline Briggs Martin, and Wendy Allen reading from “Fort Brokenheart” in the Biosphere Discovery Hub, Museum of Natural History.

--Sunday, April 6, 3 p.m.: Tess Weaver, reading from “Opera Cat” and “Cat Jumped In!” and Dori Hillestad Butler, reading from “The Truth About Truman School” in the Biosphere Discovery Hub, Museum of Natural History.

--Sunday, April 20, 3 p.m.: William Hosford, reading from “Geo the Geode” and “ABalloonC,” Old Capitol Museum.

All events at the Old Capitol Museum are free and open to the public. For more information contact the Museum of Natural History at 319-335-0606 or the Old Capitol Museum at 319-335-0548.