Neighbor and Nationally Recognized Author

Jane Scholz

Our Robson neighbor Lavelle Carlson is a nationally recognized children’s book author with 19 of her colorful books listed on Amazon.

Voices United is proud to list Lavelle among our members. She also recently won a Mom’s Choice Award (MCA), which recognizes products and services created for children, families, and educators. MCA is globally recognized for establishing the benchmark of excellence in family-friendly media.

Here’s what Lavelle said about how she came to write children’s books: “As a child, I loved to read and often had so many stories in my head.”

After she got her master’s in speech/language pathology, her favored population was the schoolchildren with autism and language and speech delays, which often led to reading deficits or indications of dyslexia.

“So much of my therapy was built around storybooks, because that is the best way to prepare children for school readiness—grammar, vocabulary, and the awareness of sounds within words.

“This also led me into becoming certified in teaching students with dyslexia. It was often less expensive for me to hire art teachers to illustrate stories for my therapy sessions. These stories turned into a business where I presented and sold books (mine as well as others by other speech/language pathologists) at speech shows.

“When I worked as a speech/language pathologist … so many of us used books for teaching our young children. Books are the gateway to learning so many skills—pitch and intonation, pre-reading via perceiving the differences in speech sounds, language and grammar skills, and even the pragmatics of conversation.”

When she retired, she sold the business. But when she had grandchildren, she found that she had to go back to writing.

“Now, it is with the greatest pleasure that I share some simple stories that will teach just a bit to young children. It also gives me great pleasure working with some truly talented artists like Judith Riffel Karr, Donna Day Mathis, and now John D. Moulton.”