ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060034
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
When she was in the sixth grade, Sherry Vaughn told her teacher that she wanted to be a writer.
Now a sixth-grade teacher herself at Dublin Middle School, Vaughn has published her first book and recorded a 48-minute cassette tape to go with it.
"Being an educator, I wanted all ages to enjoy it," including those too young to read the book themselves, Vaughn said. "With the tape, they could."
Her 54-page children's story of "Melvin's Melons" (The Overmountain Press, Johnson City, Tenn.) is illustrated by Ernie Ross, a Jefferson Mills employee in Pulaski.
Vaughn had taught at Dublin Elementary School with Ross' wife and knew he had drawings and paintings throughout the county. But she had to talk her publisher into letting her recruit him. "They wanted to print it without pictures, and I didn't," she said.
Until he read the story, Ross was not sure he would be able to complete enough pictures by the publisher's deadline. "Well, within a couple of weeks, he had done 10," Vaughn said.
She said Ross did a good job of capturing her vision of her characters in the book's 16 drawings. "We sat down and had a few meetings at Hardee's. That was our office," she said.
When she described Melvin, the hero of her story, Ross said "I know just what you're talking about." He brought out a drawing he had done years ago of a boy who seemed a freckled mixture of Huckleberry Finn and Howdy Doody. That became Melvin.
Vaughn and Ross will be at the Pulaski County Public Library at 7 p.m. Feb. 6 for story-telling and book signings. Vaughn also will be at the Free Memorial Library in Dublin at 4 p.m. Feb. 9. The book will be available for $5.95, or $12.95 with the tape.
Vaughn was unable to talk her publisher into an accompanying audio tape, so she made it herself, narrating the story and singing the three songs that are part of it. Two are based on traditional tunes, and she composed the third. Johnson City musician Doug Dorschug provides the accompaniment.
The story combines traditional mountain tales with old fantasy. It chronicles the adventures of an Appalachian youth, Melvin, who gets wanderlust and explores beyond the confines of his mountain village. He encounters a settlement of small, green, winged forest folk known as the Wee'uns, and ends up helping them sell their tasty watermelons to his own kind.
Vaughn conveys such concepts as protection of the ecology and the evils of prejudice against a backdrop of the folklore she learned from her parents and grandparents. Born in Tennessee, she spent most of her school years in Carroll County.
In the fifth grade, she wrote her first story, called "What a Horse." Her teacher wanted to know where she had copied it from, which upset Vaughn considerably - and even more when a ninth-grade teacher asked the same thing about yet another story.
She finally exploded when a Radford University faculty member questioned whether something she wrote was original because it was so well written. She still worries about whether teachers unintentionally "dumb down" their students by not expecting them to do as well as they can.
Vaughn became an oral story-teller, working with and performing for children for more than 18 years. "Every time I would tell the story, people would say 'Where did you get it? I'd like to share it with my child,' or 'read it to my class.'" So she decided to write it.
It took her roughly a summer to complete it. "Well, that's deceptive, because I told the story for four years before I ever wrote it down."
She had no luck marketing her story to big-name publishers. Parks Lanier, a writer on the Radford University faculty, suggested that she bring it to the Appalachian Writing Conference at the university because there would be publishers there. She found one who accepted it.
"It took them three years, from that day, to get it into print," she said. "I'd kind of already forgotten about it. ... Finally I stopped telling people, because I thought 'They won't believe me now.'"
She plans "Melvin's Melons" as the first of a trilogy, the second being "Grandpa's Eyes." It is based on her own childhood experience of being the eyes for her blind grandfather for some eight years, telling him everything she did and describing everything around them, all of which probably contributed to her ability to tell a story so well today.
She wrote much of the second book during her trip to a Teacher Enhancement Institute at Langley, when she was one of 20 teachers to attend from five states selected on the basis of an essay. She had time with her lap-top computer waiting in airports and between classes. "And I finished it during this long hiatus of snow," she said, when the January blizzard closed schools.
All three books will have the same characters, although they will be older by the third. She is also considering a young adult novel with an Appalachian setting.
"Melvin's Melons" is available at Books, Strings & Things, Dublin Pharmacy, Pulaski Drug, Blue Ridge Books in Wytheville, Encore Gifts at Radford, and the Virginia Deli at Claytor Lake.
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Paul Dellinger. Pulaski County teacher Sherry Vaughn hasby CNBwritten a children's boon and an audio cassette to go with it.