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Local children’s author Kathie Hendricks has had two more books published, “Please Don’t Eat the Cupcakes” and “Backyard Hockey.”
Featuring the same 8- and 11-year-old characters, Bean and Tommy, the cupcakes story is about kids helping to make cupcakes with frosting at Gramma Rosie’s house, and the cupcakes talk.
Backyard Hockey is appropriately based on the Hendricks family’s experiences when Kathie and Bruce Hendricks’ sons played hockey in Luverne.
“I learned to skate when I was a kid, and still skate today,” she said.
The back cover describes the setting. “Kids in Minnesota couldn’t wait for the weather to turn cold,” it reads. “With the cold weather that means turning some backyards into rinks. Backyards are flooded, then turned into ice hockey rinks. Kids would skate and play hockey till the ice melts in the spring!”
Two additional books are currently at the publishers awaiting release: “A Day at the Beach,” and “My Friend Andee.”
This time, Bean and Tommy are excited to go the beach and wonder if they’ll see a shark.
Hendricks said one part of the story recreates a mishap in 2015 when her grown children helped her escape the pull of crashing waves on a California beach.
The other book follows the adventures of Bean’s imaginary friend, Andee, who is based on an imaginary friend that Hendrick’s daughter spoke of in childhood.
“When we moved to Luverne, Andee moved to New York City,” Hendricks recalled about 4-year-old Stephanie.
Her latest releases join two other books already on the market.
“Here Come the Leprechauns” was released just ahead of St. Patrick’s Day in 2019, and her first book, “Walleyes and Watermelon: the Story of Summer at the Lake,” came out in January 2019.
Hendricks, a licensed in-home child care provider, said she had long dreamed of writing a children’s book, but it wasn’t until she had back surgery in 2017 that she found the time and motivation to do it.
By the end of her 10-week recuperation, Hendricks had written nine more children’s books, all neatly recorded in a stack of manuscripts ready to share with her publisher.
“Once I get an idea in my head, it doesn’t take very long to write,” she said. “It’s not a novel; children’s books are 20 pages or less.”
She publishes under the pen name, “Kate Henry,” through Christian Faith Publishing in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
Her books are available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and in bookstores.