What inspires the books I write

Natalie Kinsey-Warnock

Natalie showing one of her grandmother's quilts

My first children's book, The Canada Geese Quilt, grew out of my love and admiration for my grandmother, Helen Urie Rowell, and a special quilt we made together. My grandmother began quilting in her sixties, and made about 250 quilts. I designed several of them, including the quilt that inspired the book. I show these quilts in the schools I visit, and I encourage students to look for the stories in their own families. Two of my true family stories are Wilderness Cat and The Bear That Heard Crying, which is an amazing story of my great-great-great-great-great-aunt who was lost in the woods in 1783, when she was three years old, and a bear that took care of her. Every family has stories that are too good to be forgotten, stories that need to be written down and told and passed on to the next generations. I am currently working on over thirty books, most of them based on family stories. My sister, Helen, is the family genealogist; I have such fun researching town histories and walking old cemeteries with her, to find the stories. I feel my family's history will provide me with enough stories for a lifetime of writing.