Linda Lowery Books Time for Children

By Brenda Niemand

Boulder author Linda Lowery has written a long list of children’s books on different topics, but one subject refuses to release its grip on her imagination: Clara Brown. Unlike other biographies she’s written for the youth market (Pablo Picasso, Wilma Mankiller, Georgia O’Keeffe), Clara’s is virtually an unknown story.
This tale of a slave who bought her freedom and then, in 1859 at age 58, walked across the country to open a laundry in the gold-rush town of Central City, Colo., is a spellbinder rich in pathos, drama and history. The saga includes Clara’s stunning success in her business and property investments, her philanthropy that brought 26 freed slaves to Colorado, her search for a daughter sold into slavery at age 10, and her triumph in becoming the Colorado Pioneer Association’s first member who was not a white male.
Lowery is doing her best to make Clara Brown a household name. First, Aunt Clara Brown: Official Pioneer was published last year by Carolrhoda Books as part of a biographies series for grades K-4. Random House will publish Lowery’s longer version for grades 6-8 in 2001, and she’s working on a television screenplay for general audiences. In May she set off on a cross-country trip from Logan County, Ky., to Central City, following in Clara’s footsteps to fill in some of the many blanks in this extraordinary woman’s life.
Clearly, Lowery is not a person who does anything halfway. Nor is she reluctant to try something new (screenwriting, painting and belly dancing). Before she began writing children’s books 20 years ago, she worked as a flight attendant, a French teacher, a salesperson, a hotel convention manager and an international business travel coordinator. She discovered her true vocation only after her son was born. “That’s when I pulled out all my journals from over the years and I thought, ‘Who really keeps journals? Writers!’” Some 30 books later, she’s still at it - and loving every minute.
A French major at De Paul University in Chicago, Ill., Lowery cites travel as her greatest teacher. She’s visited most of the places she writes about in Hannah and the Angels, a children’s fiction series for Random House published under her married name, Linda Lowery Keep. Hannah is a sixth-grader chosen by four angels to help kids in need, and each book is set in a different country. In Last Chance in France, for instance, young readers learn about French culture through Hannah’s tale of intrigue and adventure in Paris.
Lowery has written award-winning books for children of all ages, from the picture-book set to teenagers. She’s also written two serious books for children undergoing emotional trauma—Laurie Tells, which addresses incest, and Somebody Somewhere Knows My Name, about abandonment by a mother. The latter was written at the request of St. Joseph’s Home for Children in Minneapolis, Minn. “We each do what we can in our own way to make a difference with the children who come into our lives,” Lowery says. “As a writer, I feel I can make a larger difference.” These two books, she notes, have generated more personal mail than any of her other titles.
In all her books, Lowery uses a fictional writing style, “because that’s what I liked reading when I was little. I’m not a factual history writer. I like a story,” she says. And, of course, her readers do, too. They also like pictures, and a happy marriage of illustrations and story is the ideal in children’s books. But always, Lowery says, the writing comes first. “The story must stand on its own; the pictures enhance the words, and maybe bring them a step further.” Lowery has been delighted by her editors’ choice of book illustrators, but recently she’s begun doing her own illustrations, and collaborating on some with her husband, graphic artist Richard Keep
Not surprisingly, Lowery loves spending time with children. “I’m just on that wavelength,” she says. She enjoys talking about writing and interacting with young people in the classroom. Among the school programs she’s presented is one about Clara Brown with storyteller Kay Negash, from whom she first heard the inspiring tale. Classroom time is a joy for Lowery, but it’s also an important tool that keeps her in tune with her readers’ interests, emotions and vocabulary. And it keeps her batteries charged: “I couldn’t write without the energy coming back from the kids.”