Back in Time

Family Reading Night attendees stepped back in time 150 years this evening with author Pat Bauer and illustrator Dave Geister. The wife and husband team shared their own history as artists and readers before enlisting volunteers to lead the Union and Confederate sides, to represent Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Clara Barton, and various other folks, and to reenact historic moments. These willing volunteers donned top hats, wool coats, kepis, shawls, and haversacks and froze in poses similar to those in Pat and Dave's book B is for Battle Cry: A Civil War Alphabet.

Pat sometimes sang (to the tune of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More") the lines of the poem, and both Dave and Pat read the lines as the frozen young actors waited with appropriate expressions of excitement, sorrow, anticipation, and determination. Rebel yells and shrieks rang out for the letter R. Davis and Lincoln almost shook hands at Appotomax for X.

With the students back in the audience, Dave sketched a Civil War soldier, and Pat fielded questions from the audience. Especially interesting to the children was the piece of hardtack Dave baked a decade ago! It was an evening of enlightenment and magical time travel.