CHECK IT OUT! Read SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL at your Library

Little by little, my memoir,  SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL: Growing Up in the 1950s at North East Neighborhood House, Minneapolis, Minnesota is being added to library collections across the country. See list below. If any of these are libraries where you live, you can now check out my book now.  If your local library does not yet have the book, please put in a request for it. Thank you!

Libraries where you can find SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL

Hennepin County Library, Minneapolis, MN

Plum Creek Library system, Worthington, MN

Duluth Public Library, Duluth, MN

Anoka County Library, Blaine, MN

Grinnell College, Burling Library, Grinnell, IA

Drake Community Library, Grinnell, IA

West Des Moines Public Library, Des Moines, IA

Wisconsin Valley Library Service (WVLS), Wausau, WI

Milwaukee Public Library, Milwaukee, WI

Superior Public Library, Superior, WI

Rhinelander Public Library, Rhinelander, WI

Kenosha Public Library, Kenosha, WI

Chicago Public Library, Chicago, IL

The Indianapolis Public Library, Indianapolis, IN

Humboldt County Library, Eureka, CA

Chapel Hill Public Library, Chapel Hill, NC

If your library is not on this list and has the book, please let me know and I will add it. I will continue to add libraries as they get and process my book.

Settlement House Girl is engaging, tracing Arnold’s growth from a young girl to an adult journeying into being a writer in her later life, but it’s also a valuable contribution to the social history of 20th-century America, offering urban history enthusiasts a wealth of information about the daily lives of families living in mid-century cities. The detailed accounts of Arnold's experiences provide a unique glimpse into the fabric of community life during this era, highlighting the interactions and shared experiences that defined the settlement house environment. BookLife (Publisher’s Weekly)

My visit to the Northeast branch of the Hennepin County Library in 1915.

THE TERRIBLE HODAG. Its Origins in Rhinelander, WI

As a child, I spent my summers at a small camp in northern Wisconsin, originally called Camp Hodag, now called Camp Bovey. In the evenings we sat around the campfire telling stories of a huge creature with the head of an ox, feet of a bear, back of a dinosaur and tail of an alligator--the terrible Hodag! When I grew up and became a children's book writer I wrote some of those stories down. One of them, The Terrible Hodag, is available as a Kindle book on Amazon. It is also available in Spanish, El Terrible Hodag.

The original Hodag stories were invented more than one hundred years ago in the logging camps of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. In an article written by Emily Bright for the Wisconsin Life blog in 2016, you can read how practical joker Gene Shepard created the Hodag and perpetuated the myth until he was finally debunked by an investigator from the Smithsonian Museum. She writes, "Rhinelander still has the hodag as its mascot for the city and the high school. Hodag statues line downtown like a cow parade with fangs. ....Thanks to Gene Shepard, Rhinelander is unique—and proud of it."

In the summer of 2006, I visited Rhinelander and took the photo below of the Hodag in front of the Chamber of Commerce greeting visitors as they drive into town.