The relatively free style of Muriel’s poems represents the creek flowing over the stones as it pushes against its banks. Ollie’s and Emma’s poems represent the stones. I “painted” them to look round and smooth, each with a slightly different shape, like real stones. They are “cupped-hand sonnets,” fourteen-line poems in which the first line rhymes with the last line, the second line rhymes with the second-to-last, and so on, so that the seventh and eighth lines rhyme with each other at the poem’s center. In Ollie’s poems the rhymes are the beginning words of each line, and in Emma’s poems they are the end words.

To give the sense of stepping from one stone to the next, I have used the middle rhyme of one sonnet as the outside rhyme of the next. You will see that the seventh and eighth lines of each of Emma’s poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Ollie’s next poem, and the seventh and eighth lines of Ollie’s poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Emma’s next poem. If you have trouble finding these rhymes, remember to look on the left side of Ollie’s poems, and on the right side of Emma’s.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

I thank Frances Foster for her constant faith, encouragement, and editorial skill, and everyone at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for all they do, with special thanks to Lisa Graff.

Don Mager worked out the cupped-hand sonnet form and shared it with me. Jonas Albertsen, my father’s Danish cousin, suggested Ruby’s Danish name and helped me with her language. I thank them.

Thanks to the Indiana chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, especially the Fort Wayne group, and many trusted friends and faithful readers.

The time in which Crossing Stones takes place is a fascinating period of history. Librarians, novelists, psychologists, historians, film-makers, letter writers, and family archivists all give us access to the past, and I am grateful. A visit to the Hull House Museum in Chicago was especially helpful.

I thank those who understand the history and importance of the progressive movement and work to continue its forward momentum. Among the many people whose work inspires me are John and Beth Murphy Beams, Ann Colbert, Claire Ewart and Tom Herr, the Liuzzi family, Omowale-Ketu and Clydia Oladuwa, Ron and Suzanne Scollon, Sox Sperry and Lisa Tsetse, and Ralph Salisbury and Ingrid Wendt.

I thank my family—the ancestors who lived with love and courage through the times I am imagining, especially my parents (my mother was born a week before this story begins and lived to admire Richard Tuschman’s beautiful jacket artwork); my brothers and sisters, their husbands, wives, children, and grandchildren; and my husband’s family. Special love and thanks to my son, Lloyd, and his wife, Penny; their children, Cameron and Jordan; and my son, Glen.