Sigrid Scully, above, reads her recently published book titled “If I Could.” The book encourages young readers to use their imagination and provoke curiosity.
Sigrid Scully, above, reads her recently published book titled “If I Could.” The book encourages young readers to use their imagination and provoke curiosity.
Sigrid Scully, above, reads her recently published book titled “If I Could.” The book encourages young readers to use their imagination and provoke curiosity.
Noah Noteboom photo
Sigrid Scully, above, reads her recently published book titled “If I Could.” The book encourages young readers to use their imagination and provoke curiosity.
HOOD RIVER  — Hood River’s newest author is 96-year-old Sigrid Scully, who published a children’s poem book titled “If I Could.” In collaboration with her friend Judy Ruderman-Shupack, who illustrated the book, they published the picture book through Cave Moon Press. The Yakima-based nonprofit literary press is led by Doug Johnson and does things a little differently than your traditional publisher. His aim is to help emerging writers bridge global and local issues that concern underserved populations.
“Every project has to donate to a charitable cause. It’s really up to the poet or artist or writer as to what cause they want to support and then we will work together to get that accomplished,” Johnson said.
Scully and Ruderman-Shupack selected SafeSpace, a child advocacy center in Hood River. SafeSpace Executive Director Beatriz Lynch said that she applauds the duo for really gaining an understanding on the work that SafeSpace does.
“Sigrid and I had a long conversation. She really spent some time getting to know the work we do with abused children and at the end she decided that we are good match for her work,” Lynch said. “Every donation is important to provide the services and with our new move we plan to expand some of the outreach prevention services, this book will help with that as well and it may even open up some doors with folks that are not familiar with the child abuse work we do.”
The book is about a collection of stuffed animals that come to life through the imaginations of the children in the book. Scully said that children nowadays don’t use their imagination as they did when there were no televisions or smartphones.
“And because the television is there, it shows you everything right away. But what’s reading? You have to imagine. That process is so unknown to kids today,” she said.
Scully was born in Europe but moved to New York at a young age. She recalls working a multitude of different jobs which sparked her curiosity. She bought greeting cards, worked for AT&T, did landscape design and made time for lots of writing in her downtime.
“I’ve written nonfiction, fiction, poems, everything. So this is really my only and first publication,” she said.
Scully said that she was encouraged by one of her friends to get some of her pieces published.
“I wrote this quite a long time ago, and never did anything with it,” Scully said. “And I dedicated the book to a friend of mine who has passed away. She was always prompting me to get something published, because she had read a lot of what I’ve written.”
Scully and Ruderman-Shupack met while teaching at an alternative school in Bend. They connected over their passion for educating students.
“We bonded over the students. We both love teaching,” Ruderman-Shupack said. “I have always wanted to illustrate a book and when Sigrid shared her poem with me I knew we had a really cool opportunity.”
The book is available exclusively online at CaveMoonPress.com for $14.95.
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