In this episode of Confetti Park, we hear the children’s book Padapillo narrated by the author, Valerie James Abbott.Based on the true life events of the author and her family, Padapillo is the story of a family discovering the hearing loss of a child.
Told through the eyes of her sister, this is the story of Little Bridget. She’s acting strangely and no one seems to notice–except her big sister. When the rest of her family finally realizes that Bridget has been ignoring the world around her and inventing weird words, it leads to the startling diagnosis that no one saw coming.
In addition to being an inspirational story of transformation and hope, Padapillo also includes an index of national agencies, organizations, and resources that are dedicated to helping families of children who are deaf and hard of hearing find the support and information they may need to move forward.
Congratulations to author Valerie James Abbott on your beautiful and important debut book, and thank you for sharing your family’s story with Confetti Park!
Loup garoups are also knows as rougarou in Louisiana, and most famously as werewolves.
It’s almost Halloween, the time of year when the doors between the living world and the spiritual world are open wide. Soon we will observe Allhallowtide, when we remember the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed.
It’s the perfect time to cozy up to a fire and hear tales of the supernatural. You decide… truth or fiction?
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, Kathleen Welch shares with us the legend of the Loup Garoup as found in Acadiana French-Canadian, Acadian, and Franco-American folklore.
The rougaroo is on display at Audubon Zoo in New Orleans
Loup garoups are also knows as rougarou in Louisiana, and most famously as werewolves. They are a terrifying night creature that emerges when the moon is full. Another word you might have heard associated with phases of the moon is “lunatic.”
“The belief is that sinners may be transformed into black bears or dogs, in which shape they wander each night until someone draws blood from them, thereby breaking the curse,” says Welch, describing the loup garoup.
You can learn a lot about werewolf legends at History.com
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, we hear about Le Lutin, a fairytale figure and a trickster spirit! Contributor Kathleen Welch shares some of the legends about this hobgoblin who has a knack for pranking.
Le lutin could change his appearance whenever he wanted. So you never know when you are seeing a lutin. But legends say his natural form was a little man with a long beard. He was especially fond of children and horses.
According to the Houma, Louisiana newspaper, “If you’ve ever lost your car keys or misplaced one of your socks, you just may have been pranked by a lutin.”
Some stories are darker. This tale of Le Lutin, from an 1870 text from France called The Fairy Mythology by Thomas Knightly, says:
The other legend named Le Lutin tells how seven little boys, regardless of the warnings of their old grandmother, would go out at night on various affairs. As they went along a pretty little black horse came up to them, and they all were induced to mount on his back. When they met any of their playmates they invited them also to mount, and the back of the little horse, stretched so that at last he had on him not less than thirty little boys. He then made with all speed for the sea, and plunging into it with them they were all drowned.
So, how to get rid of a lutin if one of these little hobgoblins is plaguing you? According to Knightly:
“The best way, it is said, to banish a Lutin who haunts a house, is to scatter flax-seed in the room that he most frequents. His love of neatness and regularity will not allow him to let it lie there, and he soon gets tired of picking it up, and so be goes away.“
Thanks to Kathleen Welch for sharing this bit of French folklore. She gives credit to The Red Housewife Blogspot.
Narration by the author of a dad’s daily notes of encouragement and life lessons to his daughter
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, we hear some sweet excerpts from Lucky Enough: A Year of a Dad’s Daily Notes of Encouragement and Life Lessons to His Daughter, in the voice of the author Dr. Chris Yandle.
“When my daughter started fourth grade, it was Addison’s fourth school in five years. It wasn’t how we planned it, but as someone who moved around a lot as a kid, I knew this school year was going to be tough. Every morning, I wrote my daughter a note about life, school, or growing up, and I’d slip it in her bookbag or her lunch box to find later in the day. I shared the notes on Twitter and Facebook using #DadLunchNotes. Before I knew it, the notes became something others were seeking each day, including Addison’s teacher and principal. While I knew others enjoyed the daily life lessons I penned in Sharpie, I wanted to stay true to my intended purpose-being there for my daughter and helping guide her through this difficult school year.”
Chris and his family live in Mandeville, Louisiana. He will be among the featured authors and illustrators at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University, being held March 19-21. Learn more about this event at https://bookfest.tulane.edu/.
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, we hear the loving and endearingly bittersweet Sometimes Even Elephants Forget: A Story about Alzheimer’s Disease for Young Children, narrated by the author Kathleen Welch. You’ll love the main characters: two elephants, Grandma Bawa and grandson Mookie, and Kip, a kind and clever hedgehog, who have an adventure together in the jungle.
The printed children’s book version is adorably illustrated by Kathleen Welch’s husband Alan McGillivray, who also helps provide sound effects in this playful narration.
When Grandma Bawa and her sweet grandson Mookie spend the day together exploring water holes and jungle paths, Grandma forgets her hat, loses her brush, gets lost, confuses her grandson’s name, and tells stories of things that happened long ago as if they just occurred. When danger threatens, Grandma Bawa’s love for her family shines through the clouds of her memory, and she remembers important and primal things she learned as a child.
It’s a wonderful story that shines as an example of how we should care for our loved ones, and how a community can come together for protection.
Kathleen Welch has an MPH and PhD from Tulane University where she has been teaching courses in the graduate program on chronic disease prevention, such as Alzheimer’s. She also teaches graduate online courses in this area at the University of New England. She has been an Ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Association and worked with Louisiana’s Rep. Cedric Richmond to pass important legislation on Alzheimer’s prevention.
At the end of Sometimes Even Elephants Forget, which is available from Pelican Publishing and on Amazon, there is a guide to further discussion with young children and a resource list for families facing this devastating disease.
Kathleen and Alan will be among the featured authors and illustrators at
the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University, being held March
19-21. Learn more about this event at https://bookfest.tulane.edu/.
Thank you Andre Cormier, Production Manager of Mt. Blue Television, University of Maine at Farmington, for your help with the recording of this podcast. And thank you, Kathleen and Alan, for sharing your wonderful story with Confetti Park!
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, you’ll hear the fascinating and fun story of the inventor Samuel Morse, who used electricity to power the telegraph and who invented Morse Code. Way back in the 1800s, he was teaching the world how to do instant messaging!
Tracy Nelson Maurer is the author of this fun biography geared toward kids, and we are so happy that Tracy has narrated the story for our enjoyment.
Back in the 1800s, information traveled slowly. Who would dream of instant messages?
Samuel Morse, that’s who!
Who traveled to France, where the famous telegraph towers relayed 10,000 possible codes for messages depending on the signal arm positions—only if the weather was clear? Who imagined a system that would use electric pulses to instantly carry coded messages between two machines, rain or shine? Long before the first telephone, who changed communication forever?
Samuel Morse, that’s who!
Tracy Nelson Maurer will be one of the featured authors at the upcoming New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University being held March 19-21. Learn more about this event at https://bookfest.tulane.edu/.
Tracy Nelson Maurer
Tracy has written several fun biographies of important change makers, such as John Deere and Noah Webster, and lots of nonfiction books about a wide range of topics such as history, STEM, social skills—even cheerleading and automobiles! Learn more
Thank you, Tracy, for sharing the story of Samuel Morse with Confetti Park!
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, we hear an original fable created by husband and wife team Iran and Henryelle Martin of Bossier City, La.
“There once lived a family of mice in the city of New Orleans, on Upperline Street, in a house abandoned of people. There were three of them…Mother Yum-Yum, Father Boom-Boom, and House-Mouse, their daughter.”
Iran, as narrator, introduces us to this cute family of mice, and gives us the background on their story.
Yum Yum as a child grew up in Micedale, Louisiana, a hop, skip and jump up the road from Baton Rouge the state’s capitol. When a traveling circus came through her small town, the country mouse fell in love with Boom-Boom, a star of the show.
Boom-Boom knew city life quite well, and was able to find his bride a wonderful house in the Garden District of New Orleans. Once they had their daughter he happily gave up the circus life, as getting shot out of a cannon is not a great way to ensure you’ll be there for your family. He was also determined that House Mouse would know how to read and write, so that she would have many options growing up.
And so…. Iran sets the stage for how it is that House Mouse’s knowledge of books helped save the family when human beings moved in to their wonderful house on Upperline Street.
This is not Annie, but it looks like her. I will try to find a picture of her and share it soon.
Three friends reminisce about rescuing a dog off a highway on their pilgrimage to Lead Belly’s grave.
With Ted Lindsay, Katy Hobgood Ray, & David Ray
It was hot. VERY hot. Dave, Ted and I finally remembered this fact about the day that we rescued Annie Ledbetter off the side of a country highway, because we recalled that the little pads of her paws were burned off by the heat of the asphalt.
Little Orphan Annie Ledbetter, the Laughing Dog, was a medium sized solid black mutt who had been abandoned on the Blanchard Latex Road in rural Caddo Parish in northwest Louisiana.
We know she was abandoned because she was running back and forth along the road cut through the rolling piney woods, sticking close to shoulder, waiting and barking, and terrified. We passed her in our truck on our way to visit Lead Belly’s grave, and agreed that were she still there on our way back, we would try to rescue her.
The headstone for Annie Ledbetter in Shiloh Baptist Church. The woman must have been loved in her lifetime. And so was the dog who came generations after her.
We spent some time in the grave yard at Shiloh Baptist Church, looking at the old headstones, including Lead Belly’s grave (a place we all visit several times a year) and noticing all the Ledbetter descendants in that yard. Ted was captivated by a head stone that had the name ‘Annie Ledbetter’ etched upon it. He loved that name.
We piled back into Dave’s white pickup truck and headed back to Ted’s house in Mooringsport. There was nothing save pine forest, or the occasional dilapidated shack or mobile home every half mile or so.
We all kept our eye out for the little black dog. As we rounded a gentle bend, we saw her.
She was there. Sitting on the side of the road. Waiting. For what? For who?
Dave pulled his truck over and he and Ted and I scrambled out of the car to approach the little black dog.
She was panicked and terrified, and bared her teeth at us. Yet she wouldn’t run away. You could see she was desperately in need of comfort. She would chase after us a few feet when we would retreat.
We didn’t give up. We had nothing more pressing on this sunny day than to save this life. We didn’t chase her. We gave her time and space and hung out in the back of the pickup truck and waited for her to get comfortable. The wind blew gently through the tree tops. Cars were few and far between.
Dave finally got the bright idea to coax her with water. He went to his truck, pulled out a big frisbee and poured in cool liquid from his water bottle. He put it on the ground outside the truck and sat just inside with the door open.
Ted and I watched from behind the truck as she warily approached the water. She sniffed, and then desperately started drinking. We gingerly approached, and soothingly talked to her. She didn’t run….. She cowered, and then she gave in. She gave herself over to what fate would bring. Ted put his hands gently on her, and next thing you know, he had scooped her up and put her into the back of the truck. We climbed in to sit with her while Dave drove the truck back to Ted’s house.
She was a lapdog for the rest of the night. Hugs and snuggles and food and water and campfire light and music. A frisky, wiggly, joyful dog emerged from the fearful creature, just like that.
Little Orphan Annie Ledbetter was full of joy, happy to be alive, happy to be loved.
She lived out the rest of her happy life with Ted there in those woods.
There is something special about a Catahoula Leopard Dog! What a strange and magical breed…It’s the state dog of Louisiana. And it’s celebrated in the cute children’s book by Leif Pedersen. Leif narrates the fun-filled adventure in A Dog Named Cat, the fourth book in The Adventures of The Swamp Kids series, for Confetti Park.
The Swamp Kids travel to a nearby animal shelter in hopes of finding a new pet they can adopt and bring home. They find a Louisiana Catahoula Cur puppy and learn all about him. (This podcast features “Sunbonnet Sue” performed by the Hackberry Ramblers.) Listen!
….They’re called “catahoulas,” and raised up the bayou a bit. They’re really good herders, and faster than lightning. At home he will be a big hit!
So now what to name their new furry friend? Lots of smiles come from this great book for animal lovers, not least the brightly colored illustrations of the swamp critters by artist Tim Banfell. Also included in the book is a Lagniappe Lesson written by WWL-TV and Radio personality Angela Hill, a dedicated animal lover respected for her journalistic talents and her unwavering commitment to animals. Angela offers kids tips on the care and responsibility involved with pet ownership.
Want to hear more? Listen to The Missing Chord by Leif Pedersen, the very first Swamp Kids book in the series. The Swamp Kids have many adventures you can enjoy… Visit www.theswampkids.com for puzzles, plush toys, activity sheets of teachers, and more!
The Catahoula Cur is an American dog breed named after Catahoula Parish, Louisiana, United States. Also known as the Catahoula Leopard Dog or Louisiana Catahoula, it became the state dog of Louisiana in 1979.
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, we hear Louis Lion – When It Gets Dark, I May Start Cryin’. This book is narrated by the author, Cindy Foust, creator of the Alpha-kidZ book series. Each letter of the alphabet gets a feature story and a feature creature who has an adventure and learns a lesson.
Louis Lion – When It Gets Dark, I May Start Cryin’ is the “L” book in the series, of course! And little Louis has a problem that many children share…. fear of the dark and being alone in bed at night.
“Bedtime for Louis became a battle. He would cry with all his might. Before his parents knew what had happened, their little Louis was sleeping with them every night.”
But what happens as Louis grows bigger? The “big bed” becomes too small!
One night, it was too much for Louis to take. Dad pulled the covers off Louis…. then his mom’s arm accidentally bonks his nose…. And mom and dad both snored too loudly for Louis to get his needed rest.
“Louis covered his head with his pillow… he just wanted some sleep!”
Guess where Louis found sweet dreams at last? In his very own bed, despite the dark!
Patti Pig, Austin Alligator, Elephant Emmy Lou, and Freddy Fox… these are some of the characters who face a challenge and find a solution. All of Cindy’s books offer lessons in character development and conflict resolution, told in engaging rhyme. And the books are brightly and colorfully illustrated (by different artists). Cindy says that personal experiences and inspiration from family and friends provided the basis for each of the stories.
Look for all the books at http://www.alphakidz.com, and look for an interview with author Cindy Faust in a future episode of Confetti Park!
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, we hear “The Fairy Fox of Bossier” by Iran Martin, from his book Grand’s Fairy Tales.
Father and son are on a walk through the forests of Bossier to gather wood. They leave mother home cooking their supper, and she warns them not to be late.
“I remember mother standing over her cooking pot, as was her custom, spicing a little of this, and a little of that,” recalls the son.
While the men are walking, pushing their rickety cart, the father talks of a place where the limbs drop from trees, making for easy gathering. They continue searching for this place, and keep walking farther and farther, always thinking it is just a little bit ahead.
“Soon we were overcome by weariness, and sat down to rest,” says the son. “The sun was fast sinking behind silvery shreds of dark shadows. And not any wood had been found.”
“Then, unexpected music swelled our senses with harps, flues, fiddles and the like….Suddenly, a wide berth of emerald colored glass appeared…from an open door within a giant majestic tree. We spring from the ground upward, pushing our cart aside, and took thoughtlessly through its opening.”
So begins an adventure of dancing with elves, sprites, gnomes and other magical woodland creatures, all watched over by the Fairy Fox of Bossier.
The men, who are enchanted by the music, pass a thrilling time dancing. But they do not realize that in this magical place, time has no meaning. They do not realize that ten years of mortal life have passed by! Only by petitioning the all-knowing and all-powerful Fairy Fox of Bossier will the men be able to return to the wife and mother, who was last seen cooking their supper by the wood fire.
Their eyes are opened by their adventure to the meaningfulness of family, domesticity, and creature comforts. Also revealed: the precious gift and strange nature of time.
Iran and Henryell live in Bossier City, in north Louisiana. They are native New Orleanians who moved to north Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. “The Fairy Fox of Bossier” and all of the tales and fables in Grand’s Fairy Tales are steeped in Louisiana folklore and imagery of the forests, bayous and other water ways of our beautiful state. And many of them offer a moral for the reader to take away.
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, we hear Patti Pig, Please Clean Your Digs, narrated by the author, Cindy Foust, mastermind behind the Alpha-kidZ book series.
Patti Pig, Please Clean Your Digs is the “P” book in the series, of course!
Patti’s bedroom “is messy, to say the least. In fact, be careful looking under her bed, in case you come across a big hairy beast!”
Patti’s twin brother, Paul, doesn’t understand how they are so different. He is so neat and clean, and her room is, well—a pig pen!
“I can’t help if I’m a little untidy,” pouts Patty. Anyway, who but Paul minds a little gum on the bed? I don’t have time to squabble with my brother. I need to plan my birthday party instead.
When Paul funds out Patti is planning a slumber party for their birthday, he offers to help her clean her room. The twins learn a lesson about teamwork—and Patti learns that a clean room is worth the effort.
Cindy Foust lives in West Monroe, Louisiana. She launched the Alpha-kidZ: Reading Adventures A-Z book series in 2003. Each letter of the alphabet gets a feature story and a feature creature who has an adventure.
Austin Alligator, Elephant Emmy Lou, and Freddy Fox… these are some of the characters who face a challenge and find a solution. All of Cindy’s books offer lessons in character development and conflict resolution, told in engaging rhyme. And the books are brightly and colorfully illustrated (by different artists). Cindy says that personal experiences and inspiration from family and friends provided the basis for each of the stories.
Look for all the books at http://www.alphakidz.com, and look for an interview with author Cindy Faust in a future episode of Confetti Park!
In this episode of Confetti Park Storytime, we hear