Murphy In The Paw-Paw Patch

Friend and fellow-author Ruth Hartman has just published her first children's book. For those of you with young ones, grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, this sounds like a winner to me. Here's where you can purchase it:

http://www.amazon.com/Murphy-Paw-Paw-Patch-Ruth-Hartman/dp/1935817205/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322682840&sr=1-1

http://www.turquoisemorningpressbookstore.com/collections/childrens/products/murphy-in-the-paw-paw-patch

And here's what the story's about:

Murphy the cat is different. And he doesn’t like it! All the other cats have paw pads. But he was born without them. Will Murphy’s journey to find some at the Paw-Paw Patch fulfill his dream?

~*~

I love cats. They’ve always been a huge part of my life. There’s one sitting on my lap as I type this, in fact. And the way he’s curled in a perfect ball with his paw covering his face, he’s not going anywhere for a while. So that means, neither am I.

Way back when, I took a course on writing children’s books from the Institute of Children’s Literature. “Murphy in the Paw-Paw Patch”, in an earlier form, was what I wrote for one of my assignments. It’s gone through lots of changes over the years and was submitted to countless publishers. No takers.

But Turquoise Morning Press, a publisher of several of my romances, had started a children’s book section. Murphy found a home with them earlier this year. From the time I took that course, I always wanted to write a children’s book. And it had to be about a cat. It had to! There’s never been a time in my life when I haven’t had at least one of the little furballs hanging around, and I hope there never will be.

I’d always heard the term paw-paw patch, although I’ve never seen one. One day, though, I decided it would be funny if the paw-paw patch had something to do with paws. Animals paws. Cat paws. Yep. My story was born.

Murphy the cat was born without pads on his paws. He sees all of the other cats running, skipping and doing cartwheels. But he can’t do those things. It hurts his feet since he’s padless. He takes a journey to a place called the paw-paw patch. His adventure leads him not only to his dream, but he makes a friend, Oliver the owl along the way.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading this story to your children, as much as I enjoyed writing and illustrating it.