Woodburn Independent Online

Local author will host book signings this month

Woodburn resident Penny Higgins teamed up with WAAST teacher Tina Uber to produce children’s book

• By: Lindsay Keefer  
• Published: 3/2/2010 10:05:27 AM

Photo By: Lindsay KeeferPenny Higgins
“There’s a Bear in My Bed” was written by Woodburn resident Penny Higgins (pictured) and illustrated by Woodburn teacher Tina Uber.

WOODBURN — After years of writing, a retired teacher is publishing the first of many stories she told her students in class.
 
Penny Higgins of Woodburn, a former teacher in Colton and Molalla and a current substitute teacher at Providence Benedictine Child Development Center in Mt. Angel, is self-publishing “There’s a Bear in My Bed” through Xlibris, a self-publishing provider.
 
The rhyming story tells about a little boy who makes up excuses not to go to bed. The story is inspired by Higgins’ brother, Roger.
 
“When he was 2 and I was 3 ½, my mom and dad went on vacation and they left us and we stayed at my aunt’s house,” said the Oregon native.
 
“He went to bed and he came to her and said, ‘There’s a mouse in my bed.’ ‘Oh, there isn’t, Roger, go back to bed.’ And then he said, ‘Well, then it’s a bear.”
 
She also said she heard a similar story after she wrote the book about her husband’s friend in Montana whose son said a bear was in his room.
 
“There was a bear that had come in through the window,” Higgins said. “So he says that’s his story.”
 
The second half of the book consists of scribble pages where children can color the illustrations provided by Tina Uber, who teaches visual arts at Woodburn Academy of Art, Science and Technology.
 
“I like the idea of involving the kids in it so they could go in and color it any way they like,” Uber said.
 
Uber, who has taught art for 22 years in Woodburn, has never illustrated a book before.
 
“(Higgins) came to me four years ago looking for someone who would help her illustrate what she was saying and I thought it would be a neat thing to do,” she said.
 
“I did it and I didn’t think anything about it. I thought, I’m just helping out someone that was in the community. I never thought I would see my own art in publication. It’s a humbling experience.”
 
While Uber’s passion is painting murals, she realized she does well with pen and ink.
 
“A lot of these (sketches) didn’t take very long but some took two or three times to get them where Penny would see her vision,” Uber said. “For her to have the whole story work she had to have those images the way she envisioned them.”
 
Higgins first envisioned this story in high school, but she first wrote a lullaby at the age of 7. She has also spent much of her 69 years learning and writing poetry, which her father taught her at the age of 4.
 
“I can remember the poems that my dad taught me but I write the poems and I forget them,” she said, adding that she can’t remember or find the lullaby she wrote.
 
Unlike her books, her poetry isn’t just aimed toward children.
 
“There are things that I need to get out and my poetry is the way I get it there,” she said, adding she’s not sure if she will try publishing her poetry.
 
“When the spirit moves me, I write.”
 
This won’t be the first the publishing world will see of Higgins and Uber said she hopes she’ll be back in it again soon.
 
“It was really a very humbling experience,” Uber said.
 
“I would love to do something like this again. It really was pretty easy for me.”
 
Higgins is planning on having another book published later this year, “The Giger and the Tiraffe.” It will be through Tate Publishing, which is using the original illustrations done by her niece.
 
“It’s about imaginary animals that get together and have babies and they’re giraffes and tigers,” she said, adding that she hopes the company will publish more of her stories. “(The message is) it doesn’t matter whether the mother and father are different colors, the babies are still precious.”
 
Higgins’ family, which includes her husband, Larry, 90-year-old mother, two sons, and five grandchildren, has been supportive.
 
“This is a story that she told to her kids and then grandchildren and really wanted to have it somewhere so they could actually read it with her,” Uber said.
 
“I think it was just really important to her that she did something with it. That’s something for her family that they will always have too.”
 
The author will have book signings at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Book Warehouse, located in Woodburn Company Stores, 1001 N. Arney Road; 11 a.m. March 13 at Cascade Park Retirement Center, 950 N. Cascade Drive; and at 10:30 a.m. March 24 in the Woodburn Public Library, 280 Garfield St.

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