Anna Olswanger researched her roots and found a couple funny children’s stories. Per newpaper articles she discovered, her great-grandfather Elias was a near-victim of robbery and her father was a featured musician favoring the blues. Anna took information in those articles and created Schlemiel Crooks, about the 1919 St. Louis robbery with the addition of Pharoah’s ghost to tell the Passover story, and Chicken Bone Man, a 1920’s Memphis story of her father as a piano playing prodigy and his narrator dog. These and her other stories are in delightful Yiddish dialect. You never know where your roots will lead you.

My Japanese grandmother
Loved Japanese pumpkins,
Small and green,
With orange flesh in between.
She ate and she ate,
With sugar and soy
Until her face grew round
And orange color could be seen
And all were afraid
They’d discover Japanese Halloween!

Linda Austin
“Cherry Blossoms in Twilight”
http://www.moonbridgebooks.com