I Love to Read — Stillwater celebrates books with visit from Kalispell children's author

Kalispell children’s author Amy Gardner was inspired to write a book based on the stories told to her by her grandfather.

On Feb. 1, Gardner visited elementary classrooms at Stillwater Christian School to share her book as part of a week of fun book-based activities as elementary students kick off “I Love to Read” month.

She read from her book, “A Boy Named Chuck” and during her visit to fourth-grade teacher Rya Diede’s classroom. Gardner shared the inspiration behind the book, and whom the main character is based on — her grandfather Chuck Plummer — and the stories he would tell growing up in Lolo by the Bitterroot River.

“This book is a compilation of a bunch of my grandpa’s stories he told me as a child,” Gardner said. “Once I realized, when I got older, how special those stories were I just kind of had a notebook and started jotting down some ideas and then I visited with some of my cousins to bring together some of the stories he had told them.”

The story unfolds over the course of the day, where a young boy, who lives in the woods, seeks out his animal friends to play games, swim, nap, fish for cutthroat trout, slide down a muddy riverbank and cook dinner over a fire.

Writing a children’s book was a natural fit for Gardner. The former kindergarten teacher, mother of five and foster parent to one, had plenty of experience reading numerous children’s books.

The book was a decade in the making, starting out as a dream and becoming a reality in 2019 when “A Boy Named Chuck” was published. There were multiple drafts, mock books made of folded paper and formatting, which was one of the most challenging parts of self-publishing she said. Finding an illustrator whose style fit was also a challenge until she found local artist Rita McKinney.

“She was the mentor mom for my Mothers of Preschool Students group at church. I had been telling her stories of my kids and one day on my birthday she brought me a painting of my four boys and she had never met them all, but from the stories I had told her she made me a painting of my children,” Gardner said.

WHAT JUMPSTARTED taking that first step to start the book was realizing her grandpa was getting older and she wanted him to know the impact his life had. Sharing the book with the Stillwater students was bittersweet. In December, Plummer — who served in the Navy during World War II, worked on the Hungry Horse Dam and opened Lower Valley Processing in 1974 — passed away at 95.

“I grew up across the 40-acre field from him and my parent’s business was on the property where my grandparents lived. I would spend my mornings with my grandparents, you know, they would be making cocoa and my grandma would braid my hair before school in the morning and I would come home from school and play cards and games and do chores with my grandpa until my parents were done working for the day,” she said.

“Even as an adult I only lived a mile down the road from my grandparents,” she said, noting that her children were able to spend time helping him in his garden, orchard and apiary.

“He lived life to the fullest,” she said.

Gardner said her goal is to write at least two more books.

“I have a notebook full of some of his stories going to school too and I would love to write ‘Chuck Goes to School,’ because when he was in school, in the mornings when he got there, they had to get a fire started in the stove to warm up the building before they could even start learning for the day. They had no bathrooms inside their school — they had to go to an outhouse — and one day he got in trouble because he was throwing snowballs at the girls coming out and had to write 100 times, ‘I will not throw snowballs at the girls coming out of the outhouse,’” she said to students’ laughter.

Gardner encouraged the fourth-graders to go out and talk to elders in their community because they might discover some incredible stories too.

Becca Blauert, book week activity organizer and first-grade teacher at Stillwater, said reading is an essential skill for everyone and a good reason to celebrate.

“Reading opens up a world of possibilities,” Blauert said.

Gardner’s book is available for purchase at Amazon.com.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 406-758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.