About the Author -
Marcia Kierland Henry : Marcia first ferried to Madeline Island as an infant while visiting her grandmother, Jessie Tanner Lytle, and aunts (Dorothy and Jean Lytle - later Yelish) in Ashland. Her great-grandfather, Captain Sumner W. Tanner, established a ferry line between Ashland and Bayfield in 1872. His steamer, the Frank C. Fero, also made occasional trips to the Island. After spending part of most summers on the Island, Marcia and her husband Burke purchased a cabin on Sunset Bay in 1989. Her dream of living full-time on the Island came true in 1996 when she and Burke retired and settled on the Island year-round.
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| "Reading with an Island Bear" |
Marcia received her doctoral degree in Educational Psychology at Stanford University, and became a professor in the Department of Special Education at San Jose State University. She was a Fulbright Lecturer/Research Scholar teaching at the University of Trondheim, Norway in 1991. She has written numerous articles for scholarly journals, authored a chapter in a major special education text book, and co-edited Dyslexia: Samuel T. Orton and his Legacy published by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), www.interdys.org. She co-authored Patterns for Success in Reading and Spelling (Pro-Ed Publishing, Austin, TX, www.proedinc.com) and wrote Unlocking Literacy: Effective Decoding and Spelling Instruction (Paul H. Brookes Publishing, Baltimore, www.brookespublishing.com). She notes that none of this writing has been as much fun as the Madeline Island ABC Book ! Marcia served as president of the International Dyslexia Association from1992-1996. She continues to consult with school districts and organizations on literacy, reading acquisition, and dyslexia.
About the Artist, Sally Parsons : Sally(www.Salparsons.com) has been coming to the Island since early childhood. Her maternal grandmother, Effie Sherzer Taylor, inspired by a picture of a Madeline Island scene, had brought her adolescent children to explore in the summer of l931. They returned the following summer to purchase land and build a two story Norwegian pine log cabin. As her children matured and had families of their own, they all spent summers at their cabin. Sally took her turn, along with the other children, hauling up buckets of lake water, lighting kerosene lamps, and cooking on an old Franklin wood stove. Trips to the end of the Island for blocks of ice and smoked chub, swimming, fishing, rowing and berry picking as well as going to town for supplies from Mary and Dan Angus' grocery store were part and parcel of a summer spent on the Island.
Sally grew up in the creative environs of artists, artisans and teachers. She has lived and studied all over the United
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"Fun in the Lake" |
States and shown her work in San Francisco and the Bay Area, the Gulf Coast and Florida as well as at the Madeline Island Art Guild Gallery. She has studied watercolor with Kay Like and had extensive classes in drawing, oils, charcoal and mixed media with both Phil Egan and Katherine Bazak of Cañada College in Redwood City, California.
She credits The Lake, Madeline Island and her grandmother’s cabin with imprinting their beauty, nature and poetry on her senses – both psychic and physical. “This place, more than any other, is my creative touchstone.”
