The Little Green Armchair and Tales of Echo Forest
- Lisa Luttrell
- Fiction
- Children, Picture
- 29-Apr-2020
A beautiful Spring morning in Echo Forest is the setting for three sentimental journeys of blossoming friendships, courage and enduring love. The Little Green Armchair illustrates how solitude, peacefulness and nature create connections that span a lifetime. In The Windy Day Picnic, Primrose Possum and her little possum family exhibit the extent to which a parent will go to make sure her children are safe at the end of a long adventure. And, finally, Neville, The Thirsty Little Stinkbug provides a little story about how wonderful friendships can be created and blossom out of troubled situations.
BOOK BLURB:
The Little Green Armchair propels the reader into a profound connection with nature like no other. Flower seeds and plump acorns are dropped by birds and fuzzy tailed squirrels onto the chair’s timeworn fabric and trickle down into its curly metal cushion coils where they stay cozy throughout the winter. Warm sunny days and soft Spring rain showers bring forth from the chair a robust, lush, green forest filled with towering Oaks, Ash and Redbud Trees with their sweet, heart-shaped leaves. Meadows of tall Pink Coneflowers and sparkling White Daisies create a colorful carpet on the forest floor. Reverence, solitude and peacefulness follow us through this tale of a little chair that provided nature with a catalyst to grow and become… Echo Forest.
The Windy Day Picnic begins on a beautiful, but windy, Spring morning in Echo Forest. In a hollowed-out Redbud Tree, surrounded by big green Hostas and twinkling white bells of Lily of the Valley, is the cottage of Primrose Possum and her ten tiny possum children. A fun-filled picnic in Echo Forest awaits with juicy apples, toasts with jam, a chocolate bar to share and blackberry tea along with a few adventures for the little family. Our stories heroines, Timothy C. Fox and Mr. Whoo the Owl, step forward in time of need in this sentimental story about a Mother’s enduring love for her children, courage and determination.
Neville, The Thirsty Little Stink Bug is plump, bright green and very thirsty after waking from a long nap in his cozy little house! Flying through the fresh Spring morning in the meadow near Echo Forest, he is on a quest to find water to quench his thirst. A beautiful Clematis vine near a large metal bowl of cool water on the farmer’s front porch is the center piece of a mishap adventure for the little Stink Bug. Passerby, Nora Bumblebee comes to the rescue, carrying Neville on her back to the lovely flower fields to rest on a big White Daisy. Sharing water and some fluffy, delicious, yellow cornbread found outside at the farmer’s barn creates a bond of life-long friendship between the two most unlikely little friends.
AUTHOR Q&A
What was your inspiration behind writing The Little Green Armchair and Tales of Echo Forest? How long did it take you to write it?
The Little Green Armchair and Tales of Echo Forest took me less than a week and a half to write. My inspirations behind writing this book were based on my own personal experiences. I indeed took a little green armchair from inside my own home and placed it in our acre side yard for my outdoor cat, Violet, to sleep and sit on in the sun. I rescued a little possum in my driveway one evening and took him to a wildlife rescue center only to discover he was at a juvenile age appropriate to jump from his Mother's back to start his own life and adventures. Lastly, I rescued a little green stink bug that had fallen into my cat's outdoor metal water bowl.
What are your plans for additional Tales of Echo Forest?
My second book will once again introduce my young reading audience to several new little characters that live in or near Echo Forest.
Who do you feel are your ideal audiences for reading this book?
The premise of writing this book was to target the key audience group for K-4 age children, parents, grandparents and/or guardians. I also felt it would be beneficial to extensively go in depth with my book and present it to the independent reader combined with vocabulary challenges and thematic questions for classroom itinerary.
Why did you choose to write this story in a far more literary form than many children’s books?
A volume of printed context tells a story. I consider my writing style vintage in the aspect that this fondly was the way children's books were composed in my reading generation of the mid-1960's through the early 1970's. It is within my comfort zone for me to construct. I love to work with detailed imagery and create a canvas for others to imagine what my characters might look like, how their voices may sound and how lovely Echo Forest truly is. I want to create a people/animal connection engaged in adventure, display various emotions, present hardships or conflict that are resolved in a sentimental manner.
What is one thing you’d like young readers to take from this book? Older readers?
I want young readers to feel the love resonating from between the pages amidst the storylines and characters I have created. I want them to feel the closeness and comfort of what friends mean to each and every one of us. I want them to see that growth and development in all types of scenarios can be positive with a helping hand. For my older readers, I want them to be engaged, in-depth with the lessons to be learned and shared, be creative with their thought process in reviewing the material that has been read.
What was your inspiration for all of the fantastic imagery in your book?
My inspirations for writing are within my view from any window in my own home. My beautiful 2-acres on which I live with my husband and son is surrounded by woods, a lake and is home to many little creatures that I see daily; squirrels and chipmunks, raccoons, possum, birds of all types and insects. I have 2 ponds and endless flower beds full of beautiful flowers and numerous ancient trees of all types can be found on my acreage. My Jack Russell Terrier, Scout and my 2 cats, Maximus and Sookie, that continue to amaze me with their funny little habits, their acute intelligence and most special to me, their unconditional affection.
What’s something you’d like to be seen done in a classroom with this book?
A "Teachers Reading Guide" for the classroom would be a very positive concept. Events in the classroom could include: vocabulary word definitions and correct spelling lessons for the younger readers. The progressed readers could also benefit from not only vocabulary word concentration but, definition, parts of speech and how the words were used in a sentence. There’s a free downloadable teaching resource guide on my website that anyone can access.
Is the chair a representation for something else?
The chair symbolizes the catalyst for the creation of living, beautiful things, botanical in nature. A building block of impossibility…becomes a possibility...to a reality.
What’s your writing process like/challenges you faced while writing this?
My writing process entails paper interpretation of animals that i have known or owned and puts them into human-like situations. They come alive on paper as little creatures with human emotions; love, happiness, kindness, intelligence, sorrow and humorous thought processes. I can honestly say that I did not have any challenges in constructing my text for this little book, my ideas seemed to effortlessly appear on paper.
Who’s your favorite character and why?
My favorite entity that I have written about is Neville, The Thirsty Little Stink Bug. This is based solely on the premise that he is a cute, bright green, plump, little stink bug with skinny legs that was quite content living in his little house under a tree bark flap in an old Redbud Tree. This image alone just makes me smile.
What is your favorite line from the book and why?
My favorite line in the book was actually the first line of the first story; "There was a little old chair by the edge of large field that had been stranded there for a very long time, and this is its story". It is a very sentimental sentence, it immediately creates an image. It symbolizes the beginning of what was to come. The little chair would be a catalyst for creating Life, Love and Happiness and so many glorious things found in nature would eventually transpire from within it.
Primary school days spent at Crittenberger Elementary at Fort Knox, Kentucky were the setting for Lisa’s earliest endeavors at writing. Composing poems and short stories on weekends became early favorites. Her elementary school librarian, Miss Sarah Franklin, guided her into reading 500 books from her school library in her 3rd grade year. She kept account of those beloved books on a little ragged notepad which still exists in her possession today. These early writing endeavors would serve as a catalyst to venture into other forms of writing expression at a later age and carry on through the years to come.
As a first-time, published author at age 58, pen to paper has allowed Lisa to create a collection of endearing stories written in a lovely vintage style. These stories have taken her back to her earliest memories of venturing on long walks in the Spring and Fall, admiring the beautiful trees and all of the animals she would encounter and most of all, the beautiful flowers.
Inspirations for her charming stories flourish on her own two-acres of wooded property that are home to a variety of woodland animals, birds and insects. Her Jack Russell Terrier, Scout and her cats, Maximus and Sookie are constant companions and provide many fun ideas and continual big smiles for her. Lisa along with her husband Tim and her son Logan lives, writes and flower gardens near Kansas City, Missouri.
