Children's Books

Fallingwater: The Building of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece

In Bear Run, Pennsylvania, a home unlike any other perches atop a waterfall. The water’s tune plays differently in each of its sunlight-dappled rooms; the structure itself blends effortlessly into the rock and forest behind it. This is Fallingwater, a masterpiece equally informed by meticulous research and unbounded imagination, designed by the lauded American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

This book guides young readers through Wright’s process designing Fallingwater, from his initial inspirations to the home’s breathtaking culmination. It is a exploration of a man, of dreams, and of the creative process; a celebration of potential. Graceful prose and rich, dynamic illustrations breathe life into the story of Frank and Fallingwater, a man and home utterly unlike any other.

A Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 2017 Blue Ribbon Book
A National Council for the Social Studies Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People

One Big Family

When you have a big family, reunions can be loud and chaotic. But as this cheerful book demonstrates, they can also be tons of fun! From canoeing down the river to getting chased by bees to telling ghost stories around the campfire, the reunion is filled with adventures for the whole family, even the pets! But when the vacation comes to an end, will everyone be able to keep the memories they’ve shared? With sunny illustrations by Sara Palacios, Marc Harshman’s winsome story evokes all the joys of summer vacation and family togetherness.

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Mountain Christmas

Miracles await the reader in this instant West Virginia classic by the poet laureate of West Virginia, Marc Harshman, and the gifted painter, Cecy Rose. Every page reveals a new glimpse of Santa coming to the mountains with his sleigh and reindeer. You do not have to be a West Virginian to enjoy this book, but natives will certainly recognize iconic scenes featuring such familiar sights as the State Capitol, Green Bank Observatory and Blackwater Falls. Cecy Rose has crafted magnificent illustrations to complement the story that add their own rich layer of visual storytelling to Harshman’s compelling voice. With poetic stanzas, each of which teases us with the coming arrival of Santa Claus, this is sure to become a keepsake volume for children of all ages.

Only One Neighborhood

One bakery has many different breads; in one school there are many children. This unique book uses a busy city neighborhood to teach the concept of one versus many. The same author-and-artist team that created the evergreen title “Only One” takes children on tour of shops, the firehouse, and more via a simple, soothing text and extraordinary woodblock illustrations. At the book’s end, readers see how many neighborhoods can come together to make one city, showing how each one of us is part of something bigger. Booklist also recommends adding this to core collection: “Peace, Not War.”

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Roads

A simple text and soothing, picturesque illustrations by Mary Newell DePalma make this a perfect story for young children eager to travel the roads and see the variety of sights making up America. “And all the good roads/ always lead you home.”

In 1991 my family left Sally’s Backbone where we had lived for nearly a decade. It was a bittersweet move. One afternoon, shortly after we had resettled in town, I found myself wondering what it might feel like for a kid to have to make a move similar to the one I had just made. The details were fresh and still all around me. I went from there.

Red Are the Apples

What can you find in an autumn garden? A harvest of bright colors, and lots to explore! Come share a day of big orange pumpkins, shiny purple eggplants, juicy red apples, and bright blue skies – a day of fall fun and abundance. Marc Harshman and Cheryl Ryan love to work in their prizewinning organic garden. Wade Zahares recently planted an apple orchard on his farm where he lives and works in southern Maine.

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All the Way to Morning

Like “Only One,” I believe this book came as a gift, although I actually do not recall its inception. Unlike the earlier book, however, this one was not immediately accepted by my editor. I always liked the idea, worked it through some significant revisions, and just kept sending it around. Then, Judith Whipple at Cavendish read it and love it at first sight. So had I.

The Storm

I have long been Friends with the fine American poet Jared Carter, among whose many accomplishments include winning the Walt Whitman Award. One afternoon, Jeb, a Hoosier like myself, was sitting on my back porch in Moundsville and asked, “Marc, you’ve written a lot about your Appalachian home. When are you going to write a real Hoosier tale?” I jokingly replied, “about basketball or tornados?” But somehow Jeb’s prompting stayed with me, and the possibility of surprising both he and myself by taking up that little joke. That’s where the story started. Later, Nancy Springer and Anna Smucker would provide important criticism that helped me get said what I wanted to say. The book was finished in the Black Mountains of Wales in the summer of 1992.

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Moving Days

Uncle James

This book draws part of its plot from recollected family tales and documents I inherited from my grandmother, especially her father’s postcards from his years in the logging camps of the American Northwest early this century. Although I did not set out to tell a tale about alcoholism, it does, nonetheless address this illness and inasmuch as it does, I have hoped with something like hindsight, that it provides true testimony and caution, as well as hope.

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Only One

A line of poetry came to me one afternoon as I was scribbling in my notebook: “There may be a million stars but there is only one sky.” I still don’t know where those words came from but it is from that line that “Only One” had its birth. I have no doubts but that this was a gift.

Rocks in my Pocket

The core of this tale comes from my co-author, a true Appalachian storyteller, Bonnie Collins. Having shared the storytelling stage at the Vandalia Gathering (West Virginia’s premier folk life celebration), where we also judged the state liar’s contest, Bonnie has been both friend and inspiration. Several years ago, my wife and I were asked to interview Bonnie for “Goldenseal” magazine. It was in the course of this interview that I heard this amazingly delightful tale and realized at once that it had great potential for becoming a children’s picture book. It features inspired pictures from Toni Goffe.

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Snow Company

This is a true, autobiographical account of a blizzard recalled from my childhood. This was also the title of a related poem that my wife suggested might make a picture book. It was this tale I sent off to my editor almost immediately upon the acceptance of “A Little Excitement.”

A Little Excitement

During the author’s meditative walk through the seasons in the back country of West Virginia, he writes of those moments of beauty and immanence when “the breeze slows/the cricket quiet/returns.” This is just about as satisfying a book of poems as we can ever hope to find.

~Jared Carter, author of Cross This Bridge at a Walk and Work, for the Night is Coming

These rich, beautiful poems are so close to the natural world that you can almost feel the wet stones and moss on your hands and hear bird song and mountain streams in the intricate music of the lines. Marc Harshman draws an intelligent, precise map of one small, rural place by taking as his reliable guide a love of naming – “hay stubble,” “branch-twined shadows,” “khaki-plated grasshoppers,” “world of wings!”

~Maggie Anderson, author of Windfall: New and Selected Poems, Pitt Poetry Series

If words could save the world, Marc Harshman’s LOCAL JOURNEYS would save the woods and small farms of West Virginia. Harshman’s vision is so attuned to this landscape that, as the speaker says in “Mushrooms,” he “can hardly step/without finding.” And what he finds is “the real story” of intricate connections, of “these little things that happen” that change the seasons, that make life possible. Poem by poem, we travel deeper into “a miraculous maze/ of shadow and bark” where the poet “open[s]/the trees/as if/as if opening/ the rooms of paradise.”

~George Ella Lyon, author of She Let Herself Go: Poems

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**THE FOLLOWING TITLES HAVE NOW BEEN RE-ISSUED IN PAPERBACK BY THE QUARRIER PRESS, CHARLESTON, WV:

A Little Excitement

Snow Company

Rocks in My Pockets

All the Way to Morning