Grandmother England and Sarah
It certainly doesn’t take much to spark my imagination. I was designing a line of dolls, dressed in calico dresses worn by girls in the colonial times of the eighteenth century. I kept seeing, in my minds eye, a cute little mischievous mouse that was a real person. That’s how this entire concept of a little girl mouse named Sarah England began.
Stories about Sarah formed in my mind. They didn’t stop during daytime, they kept evolving during sleep. She was so cute and vivacious in my mind that finally I decide to try and write a story based around her young life.
So, I started to write. What about? Well, I thought about the idea that she might be a colonial mouse. What better hmmm, as I had an old copy (found in my mother’s hope chest) about her Quaker family. This gave me the background in which to place Sarah. I actually named her after a great, great, great grandmother who lived during that early colonial time period.
Sarah’s stories revolve around her adventures, wild as they are. Are these adventures based on real life kind of things? You decide. A little hint here, creativity is a large part of Sarah’s world….daydreams and thoughts. You’ll discover all about just how developed her imagination is in her book, “Sarah England’s World” and in the bedtime stories “Sarah and the Sky Painter” and “Sarah and the Winter Angel”. (As soon as they are published!)
There are so many aspects of Sarah’s world that I thought it might be interesting to design activities young kids would find challenging. The whole idea behind Sarah’s activities will be to encourage children in developing their imagination, curiosity and problem solving skills but in a play world sort of context. Yes, I’ve been profoundly influenced by Daniel Pink’s book, The Whole New Mind.
Sarah sets out tea for friends.
Oops, Sarah just whispered in my ear that she has already organized plans for a tea party and will tell you all about it shortly. She doesn’t know it but I was standing behind the door when her friends came over to talk about having a tea party and the kind of tasty treats they would make. So, I guess it’s another one of the things that you can anticipate discovering about this fun loving little girl mouse.
Each week on this blog Sarah will share a little mystery for children to solve. Every other week I’ll include a board game (that can be downloaded) that they can play. Each activity will offer a fun way and creative way to develop vocabulary and math skills, as this in part is what the world of Sarah England is about.
I want to give young readers a fun way to think about things that are sometimes not part of their school.
-Trava Kampe, Author
Julie Rodriguez Jones, Illustrator
Discover more about Sarah England at www.SarahEngland.com
