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.

THE TERRIBLE HODAG Now Available as a Kindle Book

My tall tale, The Terrible Hodag, originally published in 1989 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and long out of print, is now available again as an e-book published by StarWalk Kids.  The striking paintings by Lambert Davis that illustrate the book capture the mystery and drama of the story.

Every day, Ole Swenson and the other lumberjacks went into the forest to cut down trees.  They worked hard from sunup to sundown, but when night fell, all the men returned to the lumbercamp.  They did not want to meet the terrible Hodag, who had the head of an ox, the feet of a bear, the back of a dinosaur, and the tail of an alligator.  His eyes glowed like fire and he was forty feet tall.

This book is a retelling of the story told by my father that I heard around the campfire as a child at Camp Bovey in northern Wisconsin.  The story continues to bel told to campers at Camp Bovey today and the Hodag's image is still on their t-shirts, as it was when I was a camper.

You can get The Terrible Hodag for your Kindle at Amazon.

Mixed-Up Animal Writing and Art Activity

My two tall tale books, The Terrible Hodag and the Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers, feature a creature with the “head of an ox, feet of a bear, back of a dinosaur, and the tail of an alligator.”  (The first Hodag stories were  invented about a hundred years ago in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. My books are variations on those tales.)  On a recent visit to my brother’s third grade class in Novato, California, I asked the children to invent their own mixed-up animals.  They created some remarkable creatures, complete with illustrations! One of my favorites had the head of a fly, feet of a chicken, back of an albatross and tail of a leopard.  Its favorite food is bats! I hope that some of the students will now use their invented animals to write their own tall tales!