MEMORIAL BRICK at the CHAPEL HILL PUBLIC LIBRARY, Chapel Hill, NC

In 2012, my daughter ‘s Jennifer and her family purchased a memorial brick in honor of my books in support of the new Chapel Hill Public Library. On my recent visit to North Carolina we visited the library, a beautiful spacious building, and paid a visit to the patio which is made of all the memorial bricks. (The letters on the bricks are still there but a bit weather worn.) 

Inside the library I left a copy of my new book SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL as a donation to the library collection to be considered for acquisition. We also stopped for a nice chat with the children’s librarians in the large children’s room. The library has 33 of my books in their collection! I was happy to see how busy the library was on the Sunday morning of our visit. As the librarian scrolled through the list of my books on the computer she commented how my book GIANT SHARK was one of the children’s favorites. I'm pleased to know that kids are still enjoying it nearly 25 years after it was first published!

Update January 2025: SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL is now on the shelf at the Chapel Hill Public library and ready to check out!

ROSALYNN CARTER BUTTERFLY TRAIL

Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail at Lake Lure, NC

From roses to succulents, pollinator gardens to art installations, the Flowering Bridge at Luke Lure, in the mountains of western North Carolina, is a wonder of nature and testament to the volunteers who turned an abandoned bridge into a beautiful floral walkway.

The Lake Lure Flowering Bridge is a stop along the Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail, which begins in Plains, Georgia, at the home of President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter. The mission of the trail is to promote the full life cycle of butterflies common in this area with a special emphasis on the monarch.

Monarch butterfly.

When Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter learned of the struggling Monarch Butterfly population and threatened migration from North America to Mexico, she called on her neighbor and friend Annette Wise for advice on planting the right native plants in her garden.  When friends and neighbors in Plains learned what she was doing, they wanted to provide habitat in their gardens to help pollinators. Eventually, a "trail" started of butterfly gardens one house at a time, one church at a time, one library, one state, and so on.

The more butterfly gardens that exist, the greater the population of Monarch Butterflies, which have been so threatened for the past several decades primarily due to the removal of milkweed plants from farms and properties.  Monarch butterflies need milkweed on which to lay their eggs. Otherwise, the cycle of life for butterflies ends.  All pollinators benefit from native nectar and host plants. Find out more about the relationship between monarchs and milkweed at my earlier post on this blog.

On an informational board at the beginning of the bridge is a panel describing common butterflies of the area.

I visited the Flowering Bridge and learned about the Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail on a trip to North Carolina in August. I was pleased to see information about the Painted Lady Butterfly, the subject of my book BUTTERFLIES IN ROOM 6.  It was a rainy day and I didn’t see any butterflies, but I am sure that when the sun comes out, the garden will be full of them, feeding on nectar produced by the abundance of flowers.

You can read more about my visit to the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge at my travel blog The Intrepid Tourist.

All Text and Photos copyright Caroline Arnold

Truth is Stranger than Fiction: Talk to UNC Library Graduate Students at the SILS Library, Chapel Hill, NC

SILS Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking to the graduate students and faculty at the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill about the process I go through when writing and illustrating one of my nonfiction books. We met in the SILS Library, which has a large collection of children’s books, and I was pleased to see a display of more than a dozen of my books on top of one of the bookcases. The books are used for research but are also available for checkout by anyone on campus. We gathered around a large table in the corner of the library and a screen was set up for my slides. Library Head Rebecca Vargha gave a very nice introduction for my talk and at the end we had a lively discussion and questions. I thank Rebecca for inviting me and graduate student Alena Principato for helping to make arrangements, for promoting my talk on campus and taking pictures. I enjoyed my visit very much! I am always glad to meet librarians. They are the people who put books like mine in the hands of children.