AUTHOR VISIT: Reading THE TERRIBLE HODAG to the ESNS Preschool in Minneapolis

Showing the picture of the Hodag on my Camp Bovey sweatshirt to the ESNS preschool.

My first trip to Camp Bovey, the ESNS camp in northern Wisconsin, was when I was four years old. Then it was called Camp Hodag and as we sat around the campfire at night, my father told stories of the Hodag—a creature with the head of an ox, feet of a bear, back of a dinosaur, and tail of an alligator. I remembered those stories and when I grew up and became a children’s book writer, I wrote some of them down.

Ole Swenson meets the Hodag.

Last Friday, I visited the preschool at ESNS in Minneapolis and read my book THE TERRIBLE HODAG to the three and four-year-olds. They were just as fascinated with the Hodag as I had been when I was four. One of the children had even gone to Camp Bovey with his family and was proudly wearing his Camp Bovey t-shirt with a picture of the Hodag on the front.

Camp Bovey.

My father, Lester Scheaffer, was the director of ESNS (East Side Neighborhood Services) for 18 years and founded Camp Bovey in 1949. I thank Margie, the preschool director at ESNS for inviting me to read to the children. Long ago, I too attended the ESNS nursery school, then housed at Northeast Neighborhood House.

THE TERRIBLE HODAG in Spanish, available on Amazon.

THE TERRIBLE HODAG has long been out of print in hardback (although you may be able to find it online as a used book, or in your library) but you can find a digital version of the book on Amazon in both English and Spanish.