Publishing "Raccoon Summer" checks off bucket list item

SEELEY LAKE – "Mom those little raccoons grew up, climbed down from the tree and ran away a long time ago," Keith told his mother Betty Vanderwielen after she told him she was finally going to finish writing the raccoon book she had started years earlier. She said she replied to him, "'They can't. Until I have Lance rescue them, raise them and release them, they are always up in that tree waiting to be rescued.' Whether the book ever gets published or not, I have to write it for my own peace of mind."

After more than 40 years, the story of the baby raccoons has been told. This winter Chicken Scratch Books published Vanderwielen's first book "Raccoon Summer," a middle grade historical animal story.

A few weeks ago Vanderwielen sent Keith his autographed copy and told him his love for the raccoons infused the book.

She said, "I just love this book, I really do."

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In the mid-1970s, the Vanderwielens volunteered with an animal rehabilitation program through the Kalamazoo Nature Center in Kalamazoo, Michigan. For nearly 10 years they took in raccoons, birds, possums, squirrels and they babysat a skunk.

The baby raccoons were their favorite. They would follow Keith around in the yard when he was just a toddler. The Vanderwielens raised them until they could be released into the wild.

"It is just fun to watch them grow," Vanderwielen said. "They are really intelligent creatures."

Vanderwielen wanted to create a photo documentary book of raising the baby raccoons. However, she did not take many photos and the ones she did take "were kind of lousy. That book died before it got started," Vanderwielen said.

After moving to Missoula at the end of 1995, Vanderwielen decided to write the story of raising the raccoons.

Her first manuscript included an anthropomorphic prologue from the mother raccoon's perspective. After being hit by a car, the story shifted to the baby raccoons' perspective growing up.

"One of the things I wanted to focus on was how we think we know what animals want but we don't always," Vanderwielen said. "We can be completely wrong."

Vanderwielen attended a workshop in 1998 with the Society for the Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). Attendees each read a few pages of their book-in-progress and received comments.

"Everybody wrote get rid of the baby [raccoon] voices," Vanderwielen said. "I was taken aback and kind of hurt because I loved those little babies and their voices. I didn't want to get rid of them."

Vanderwielen stepped away from the book for a while. When she picked it back up she envisioned it without the baby voices. She also developed a storyline and conflict for the main character Lance, a 13-year-old boy who found the baby raccoons and raised them.

She recounted how one day she was prepared to write about Lance's stepmother Nikki telling him he could not keep the raccoons. However when she went to write it, Nikki "just freaked out. I didn't know she was going to do that until I was writing it. That was just the most exciting thing to me, to understand the characters had their own life. I realized I knew my characters well enough that I could trust them to do their thing."

After finishing the story, Vanderwielen started sending out her manuscript to various publishers. Despite the rejection letters piling up, having her book published by a publisher was very important.

"Though I've read some very good self-published books, I've also read many that are just really lousy," Vanderwielen said. "It was important to me that my book be not just my ego trip. I needed to know that someone with some kind of authority agreed that my book was worth publishing."

As time marched on, Vanderwielen realized an important device in the story, the telephone in the shape of a Chevrolet car that symbolizes Lance's communication with his mother, was no longer relevant. Today, children much younger than Lance already have their own cell phones.

"That easy access to a cell phone didn't work in the story," Vanderwielen said. "I thought, I haven't even published my book and it is already outdated."

Vanderwielen worked on the book on and off in between writing a medieval fiction book named "The Unwilling Apprentice." She also joined a writers group in Missoula. Joann Howeth, Assistant Regional Advisor for SCBWI Montana was a member of the group. After hearing parts of "Raccoon Summer," Howeth asked if she could read the entire manuscript. After reading it she insisted Vanderwielen submit it to Kiri Jorgensen with Chicken Scratch Books.

"I didn't believe my book was right for her publishing company, but I thought, 'what is one more rejection,'" Vanderwielen said.

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Chicken Scratch Books is a new publishing company that publishes only middle grade books focused on traditional values and good literature. Though it reaches out to all middle grade students and their parents and teachers, its target audience is homeschool educators.

Being a writer and middle school teacher her whole life, Jorgensen had the brainstorm to add curriculum to go with the books she was publishing. She creates two online novel study courses for each of the published books, one that focuses on enrichment and the other a deeper analysis study.

"I love teaching kids," Jorgensen said. "The kids love meeting the authors as part of reading the book and doing the course, so I ask each author to create three short videos. That has been super fun."

"Chicken Scratch Books' focus is on healthy families," Vanderwielen said. "What I had at this point was a little edgier. I didn't think it worked for the niche that Kiri wanted for her books."

Despite Vanderwielen's concern, Jorgensen accepted the manuscript. Jorgensen said she loved the main character Lance because he is generous, giving and has a heart of gold.

"I'm always looking for stories that can convey what it is like to be that age of kid," Jorgensen said. "I really liked that portrayal of a 13-year-old boy who is figuring out life but he does it in a very positive way."

Jorgensen added in addition to Lance, she loved the raccoons.

"Just the combination of Lance being very appealing to me as a character and then the whole raising baby raccoons," Jorgensen said. "Of course Betty does a fantastic job of teaching that process through the story as well because Lance is learning it himself."

Vanderwielen signed a contract with Chicken Scratch Books in July 2021. Then the editing began.

Jorgensen asked Vanderwielen to cut her manuscript from 84,000 words to less than 45,000 words. She also recommended the story be set in the 1980s. That solved Vanderweielen's concern about the phone.

"The 1980s is probably when I wrote it," Vanderwielen said and laughed. "It was fun to research what things happened in the 1980s."

Finally, Jorgensen told Vanderwielen one of the subplots needed to be rewritten.

"Some of those subplots were a little more edgy than I wanted to see in this book," Jorgensen said. "We had to tone them down and make some changes."

"I always told myself if I ever get to the point where I have to rewrite and I just don't want to and I'm sick of it, then it is time to give up on the book," Vanderwielen said. "As long as I can go back to it and feel that happiness of being in this world, then I can keep rewriting it or doing what I need to do to make it better."

Vanderwielen said it was really difficult to give up some of the chapters that she had worked on for so long. There were days that she stopped writing to mourn chapters that were cut and parts of the story that were no longer being told. In the end, the new subplot has Lance's mother struggling with the decision to adopt a child with Down syndrome.

"I was never entirely happy with the [edgy subplot] myself but I just didn't know what else to do. Kiri pushed me to come up with something else and so I did," Vanderwielen said. "By the time I got the book done, I really liked it much better than the original version."

"I think it has turned out wonderfully and I'm very, very pleased," Jorgensen said. "I'm super excited for this book and I think it is going to go over very well."

Vanderwielen said she was very excited when she saw the cover art created by Lucy Davis. She is looking forward to being the featured author at Alpine Artisan's May 21 Open Book Club and giving book talks at local schools.

"I'm more interested in having kids read the book than I am about getting money out of it," Vanderwielen said.

To learn more about "Raccoon Summer" visit bettyvanderwielen.com. The book can be purchased locally at the Grizzly Claw Trading Company. It is also available along with a four-week literature EXPLORE course and six-week literature ANALAYSIS course online at Chicken Scratch Books, chickenscratchbooks.com.