Creator of Horrible Harry shares her art with kids

By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- A notebook is a young writer's best tool, says children's author Suzy Kline.
"Things happen in your life every day that make wonderful stories," Kline told children Friday at Laird Avenue Elementary School.
She carries a notebook in her pocket every day. Even though she doesn't have time to write a full story when an idea strikes her, she jots down a word or two to remind her later.
Kline, author of children's series books with characters such as Herbie Jones and Horrible Harry, spoke to the pupils as part of Trumbull County Education Service Center's literacy week. She also appeared at other Trumbull County schools through the week.
Jeanne Killen, the school's literacy coordinator, said each class at the school read a different series of Kline's books. Principal Michelle Chiaro used a grant to buy one of the author's books for each child. Kline signed each one.
Pupil-created posters and artwork decorate school rooms and hallways depicting the books the young ones read and explaining their favorite parts.
Inspiration from pupils
Kline, of Connecticut, was a teacher for 25 years before becoming an author.
The inspiration for one story, "Horrible Harry and the Purple People," came from one of her pupils. The building where she taught, built in 1904, retained the old coat closet and its wooden hangers.
One of those hangers broke, leaving fewer hangers than pupils. Kline brought a purple plastic hanger from home to fill the void.
The children in her class raced that first day to be the one to hang his or her coat on the purple hanger.
Kline wrote "purple" in her notebook and the book was born.
"The most important thing I carry as a writer is a notebook," she said.
Kline started writing as a child, and that passion intensified in the fifth grade when she read one of her stories aloud to her class.
"I looked up and I thought, 'They're really listening to me,'" she said.
Inspiring others
She also gives little notebooks as gifts.
Although her husband, Rufus, wasn't keen on the gift, he promised to write one sentence per page. After seven years, he'd filled the book and later published his own children's book, "Watch Out for These Weirdos," in which he kept the one-sentence-per-page theme.
Kline employed other snippets culled from her years in the classroom into her books. A pupil who sharpened his pencil down to a stub inspired the stub people, and a necklace made with dangling Christmas bulbs played roles in her Horrible Harry series.
denise_dick@vindy.com