Book Inspires Sharing Stories

By Christie Vilsack

2006

Parents, grandparents, siblings and others who care about the children in their lives likely have already begun reading to Iowa’s kindergartners from this year’s specially selected book, The Pickle Patch Bathtub, a project of my Iowa Stories 2000 Foundation.

It is hoped that the delightful story by Dubuque’s own Frances Kennedy, illustrated by Sheila Aldridge, will inspire families all over the state to share their family stories with each other.

In The Pickle Patch Bathtub, Frances tells the true, heartwarming story of her mother, Donna Delle Philp, who has outgrown the family’s old washtub and determinedly sets out to earn enough money to buy the family a real bathtub. To do so, she enlists her siblings to help her grow cucumbers and sell them to the pickle factory in Keokuk, Iowa.

The story illustrates the Iowa value of setting a goal and working hard to reach it, persevering in the face of obstacles. The book also conveys the positive values of loyalty to family and personal sacrifice for the greater good.

I personally gave the book to more than 800 kindergartners in 14 schools all over the state in April and May. The kids got a chance to sit in a washtub—no water in it—chomp on a few pickles, and try out a pickle-measuring board similar to the one shown in the book.

At the first school, Table Mound Elementary in Dubuque, Frances and Sheila joined in the fun as we handed out the books to the children.

The bags containing the books also held a coloring map of fun Iowa places, a box of crayons from the Iowa Soybean Association, a bookmark, and for parents, information on the Hawk-i insurance program and tips from the Department of Education on reading to children.

The purchase and distribution of the book to all of Iowa’s nearly 45, 000 kindergartners were made possible through the hard work of the people at the Iowa Area Education Agencies and our other wonderful corporate and individual sponsors listed at the beginning of the book.

The Pickle Patch Bathtub was the fifth book given to Iowa kindergartners in as many years. The governor recently reminded me that if you count all the children who received a book (the first would be fourth-graders now) and their parents, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends who might have read the books, you could figure the books touched the lives of about half the people in Iowa. The power of books and reading never ceases to amaze me.

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