Robson Ranch author Lavelle Carlson
Joan Muyskens Pursley
The Library Subcommittee is excited to present its second Robson Ranch Authors program, this one featuring Lavelle Carlson. It will be held in the library on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, at 2 p.m. Lavelle is the author of numerous children’s books and teaching manuals. Her program will cover the how-tos of writing a short story for children, a neat Valentine’s Day or birthday gift for the children in your life, especially if you base the story on a funny or meaningful event from your own childhood or theirs.
A native Texan, Lavelle attended the University of Houston, majoring in sociology, but marriage and international travel with her husband interrupted her studies. “We moved many times,” she says, “and lived in England and Norway for 10 years. When we finally made it back, I completed my undergraduate and earned a master’s in speech/language pathology in Oklahoma.” She then began a long career working with special needs children.
“Once my husband retired, we moved to Texas where I continued to work with special needs children in the public schools. That is where I truly began my writing,” she says, “as I could create my materials in storybook format to teach speech, language, and pre-reading and dyslexia remediation.” With the support of her husband, she hired people to create accompanying illustrations and prepare catalogs.
Lavelle credits her students and grandchildren with inspiring her to write but admits she began writing as a child when “sitting in a tree reading books.” In addition, she tells us, “In the middle of the night, I would sometimes awaken and tell myself stories. Unfortunately, I did not have access to a journal, but I do have memories of some of my thoughts.”
When Lavelle finally retired and moved closer to her young grandchildren, she thought that was the end of her children’s storybooks. But she felt the need to write stories related to them or to their parents’ travel adventures. This resulted in a book on Norwegian Trolldom about which her daughters heard every Christmas. But the book took a fun, different twist. It is titled Farting Four-Toed Troll. Next came a book for her youngest granddaughter, “our bunny whisperer,” she says. Titled Bee, Honey Bunny and Me, this book has her granddaughter meeting a bunny in dreamland who hates carrots, just like she does. In the dream, they are introduced to bees who show them how to make carrots yummy by just adding honey.
For more on Lavelle’s books and to get ideas and tips on writing your own stories for grandchildren, come to her Jan. 16 program. For more on the Robson Ranch library, visit www.RobsonLibrary.org.