Your path: Jessie Turner
Jessie Turner Publishes Third Book
Excerpt from an article by Mary Jean Porter in The Pueblo Chieftain, March 18, 2008.
Jessie Turner puts her interest in history, handcrafts and education to work as a staff member at the Stauffer-Will Farm, a program of the Aurora Colony Historical Society. Schoolchildren visit the farm to learn about life in the utopian Aurora Colony in the 1870s.
"I love providing an opportunity for young people to discover great things about themselves. It's why I split shakes and saw wood and bake bread with kids. It's why I write stories for them - to lead them to discover their own strength."
Because the fourth-graders' field trips are brief, Turner began encouraging them to send her questions, which she answered in writing and sent back to their schools. Those questions and her answers are the basis of her third and recently published book, Is Anybody Buried in the Cellar?
Other questions in the book are: Did anybody die in the house? Did they have toilet paper back then? Did kids get bored of doing the same thing every day? How many trees were cut down to make the house?
Is Anybody Buried in the Cellar? was published by PublishAmerica and can be purchased online for $14.95 at www.publishamerica.com. Proceeds will go to the Aurora Colony Historical Society.
Turner is a member of Willamette Writers and takes professional novel-writing classes at Mount Hood Community College. She also volunteers at the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.
Jessie Turner earned a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies (education and psychology) at Marylhurst University in 2003.