Dear author...

It's not your typical love story, a boy falling headlong for a book. But, if you ask middle school student Samuel Zamora about the first "Young Wolf" book by Janice Shefelman, he'll tell you how that story started his love affair with reading.

It also started a three year communication with the book's author that brought her and illustrator-husband Tom Shefelman to the ISU campus and Pocatello community last week. The audience members attending Tuesday night's Bellon Visiting Author's Conference presentation at the Pond Student Union were treated to a true story about how readers can provide the impetus an author needs to send their next manuscript one more time to a publisher. In this case, the eager reader was ten year old Zamora.

Shefelman's young Comanche character, Young Wolf, makes choices in the story series that early readers can identify with, admire and emulate. It brings friendship, family and the lessons of growing up from a Comanche boy's viewpoint to modern day children looking for realistic stories to read on their own.

"It's the first story I ever read that seemed like it really happened," related Zamora speaking at the Visiting Authors event about "A Mare for Young Wolf." After reading Shefelman's second book, "Young Wolf's First Hunt," he wanted to know what happened next to the character and asked his school librarian, Kaye Turner, if she would get some more books about Young Wolf. Recognizing this student's new passion for reading, Turner quickly found and bought the third book in the collection without the delay of filling out the Jefferson Elementary School requisition. Young Zamora was soon back at the library after reading "Young Wolf and Spirit Horse," anticipating his next read. Turner checked the book listings and regretfully relayed the news to the boy that no other books had been published about Young Wolf by Shefelman. The fifth-grader was disheartened but then revived when Turner suggested he dictate a letter to the author for her to send. He wrote, ". . . your books are the best books I have ever read. They are the first ones I loved. I am driving my librarian crazy because I want her to order more of your books and she keeps telling me there aren't any. Please help!"

The wise librarian added a note of her own at the bottom of the young reader's letter explaining what an influence the Young Wolf book had had on opening the literary world to a child that had shown little interest in reading before checking her first book out. Sammy Zamora persistently checked with Turner asking if his author had written back.

"Thankfully, Ms Shefelman was prompt in handling her correspondence," Turner quips.

"I knew right away that I would be communicating with this extraordinary young man," Shefelman related, "He wrote to me from his heart and it spoke to mine."

She had a new manuscript written about Young Wolf but it hadn't been accepted for publishing. Zamora's eagerness to read more about Young Wolf prompted Shefelman to turn it in again. It was almost a year later that she was able to write her number one fan, that "Son of Spirit Horse" was getting its finishing touches by illustrator Tom Shefelman and would be in print shortly. That's when Zamora wrote and asked if Ms. Shefelman would come and meet his school. He also suggested that since Young Wolf was getting older, maybe it was time he had a girlfriend.

"He knows the characters as well as I do," remarked the author, "In Son of Spirit Horse I had introduced a new character, a girlfriend for Young Wolf."

Shefelman dedicated this book to young Zamora for "writing from his hear."

Tuesday's presentation opened with a special ceremonial drum-prayer song offered by Shoshone-Bannock Tribal spiritual leader, LeeJuan Tyler. Then the two Shefelmans took the audience on a slide show tour of their writing and illustrating professions.

As a young girl, books opened the door to Janice's desire to see the world. She traveled on bicycle around Europe and in North Africa and the Middle East. After she and Tom married, they sold everything and became "Honeymoon Hobos" and set out on a year-long trip around the globe, writing and illustrating articles for newspapers and magazines to support themselves.

Janice's writing career took shape when she began working on children's books. Her first book, "A Paradise Called Texas," came out of Texan frontier stories handed down through her father's family. She most enjoys writing about people's heritage and their connection of past and present. Although she is not Comanche, she says she senses a connection with them and other cultures, similar to being like "spokes on a wheel."

Tom Shefelman found drawing and cartooning to be his "ticket to social acceptance and good grades" in high school once teachers let him illustrate his reports. His abilities for drawing and his love of beautiful buildings attracted him to a career as an architect as well as book illustrator. He divides his time between his home studio and his architectural office in a historic building in Austin, Texas.

It seems no coincidence that Janice writes books and Tom illustrates them. They are able to confer about every stage of bookmaking and find the close collaboration stimulating.

"Working together can make or break a marriage," Shefelman purports, "In our case, it makes it."

Older now and preferring to be called Samuel, Zamora is being raised by his mother, Syrina Flores, of Mexican heritage, and stepfather, Todd Tendoy, a Shoshone-Bannock member. Tendoy's mother, Lela Teton and grandmother, Charolotte Tendoy, have also had quite an influence in young Zamora's sense of connection to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe.

Certainly, love of literature is the common bond in this story within a story. It is interesting that a young boy of Mexican descent, embraced by his Shoshone-Bannock step family should find his reading connection through a story of a Comanche boy, written by an author of German heritage, living in Texas. Maybe love really does make the "literary" world go round. In this case the door is wide open.