For some graduates, the concept of working together with the dear friends made at Hillsdale seems unfeasible.
For Hillsdale alumnae Betsy Howard ’10 and Laura Kern ’12, however, their common ideas developed into a shared vision to found a publishing house for children’s books, entitled Wandeling Press.
Howard and Kern knew each other from afar as Hillsdale students, as they were several years apart.
This past year, Howard reached out to Kern about illustrating a children’s book Howard had authored. Kern has an Etsy shop where she sells watercolor paintings.
“She sent me a number of stories and poems she had written, and asked me which ones sparked my imagination,” Kern said. “I passed that onto a children’s librarian friend of mine to see which storyline had the most potential.”
Midsummer 2015, the two began talking about the possibility of producing a book — that idea expanded into publishing.
“The original idea started as, ‘Let’s produce a book.’ The more we thought about publishing, the more we thought, ‘Well, if we’re going to produce a book — we’re Hillsdale grads, we don’t do anything half-way — why don’t we have a formal space to have the book,” Howard said.
The two then began sharing their ideas with other Hillsdale graduates.
“We learned that there were a number of other women both who were really artistically gifted as well as linguistically gifted, who have this desire to serve children in this way,” Howard said. “Right now, Wandeling Press will hopefully be the parent of this book, and then many others. But there are not formally, there’s just this one book in production.”
The publishing house then, will be a sort of collaboration for women who might not have a lot of time to publish a book alone, but who have ideas for books and illustration. The press would have both collaboration and encouragement.
Their first book centers around a particular season — winter. The story, “Woolies for the Winter,” tells of a hedgehog and a bunny and their adventures in getting ready to play in the snow.
Kern noted that future books might include stories for the other seasons. Their love for, and awareness of children’s literature stems from their roles as both children and mothers.
“Both of our moms were incredible women and teachers who read voraciously to us when we were little girls,” Kern said. “What they were doing, as they were introducing to us world of literature, was so much more than just reading stories. They were forging our understanding of narrative at a very early age.”
For both mothers, this love and wonder of literature imported to them from their own mothers has become an infectious joy and delight as they share the same love with their children.
“As a mom myself, I’ve loved reading to my son, who is 14 months old, and it’s just a joy to see him engage with stories,” Kern said. “So many of the books I see in bookstores and libraries, I tend to avoid. The good far outweigh the bad, but there are several in which you can tell that the author is peddling a moral that I wouldn’t necessarily agree with.”
In September, the two contacted Sarah Gerber ’10 for her website design consulting and production of their Kickstarter video. Through a Kickstarter campaign, the team is gathering the funds for this endeavor. This video brought together many Hillsdale graduates and aimed at capturing the nature of Wandeling and “Woolies for the Winter.”
“I really wanted to capture Laura and Betsy and hearing their voice, so people can hear who they are and what they’re about,” Gerber said. “You see a little glimpse into their lives, and the part that is most connected to their project, which is their kids. I focused on that dynamic and relationship because that’s the basis of this story and their project.”
Howard and Kern described their vision as a publishing house that produces books for children that are pure and simple, sweet and good.
“Why we love to read good children’s literature and why we shudder at the bad is because they should be helping little ones to understand this fact that we are storytellers, and that we are all involved in a story,” Kern said. “It helps them find themselves and sit themselves into their own story, to think sequentially. It sparks their imaginations.”
These concepts, and the six convictions listed on their website, manifest themselves in physical form within the books themselves, as art.
“Our personal dispositions, as well as what we desire for the press, is not to be kitschy in its educational purposes,” Howard said. “Rather, to be very subtle and discreet. Mostly because we find that our own children select books that are lovely, beautiful to behold, rightly proportioned, a nice size, and not wonky. So when we watch them, we think, ‘that’s the way that we choose books too,’ so why don’t we make it beautiful and full of good content.”
This content, they said they believe, should be subtle, nuanced, and delightful to behold, but it should also teach.
“It’s not moral teaching like the book of virtues,” Howard said. “Rather, we want work that instructs by participating in it.”
Describing her newfound attentiveness to the content and production of children’s books since the birth of her son, William, Kern said she now wants to know what the author’s goal is.
“Now I read much more closely because I want to know what they’re getting at,” Kern said. “What are they telling my child about the world, himself, the created order? Sometimes the illustrator is so desperate to hold the attention of the child that he’s resorted to these very garish tactics, like he’s aware that he’s competing with iPads and iPhones.”
Kern said they want to present a piece of work that presents simple beauty and teaches subtlety.
“They’re just purely simple, sweet, and lovely and that’s what we want with the illustrations as well,” she said. “They will be light and visually arresting, but in a way that demands participation from the viewer.”
Part of the delight for all the people involved with Wandeling, they said, is the experience of working with friends and other great minds with similar visions.
“I think the main thing is that this is about creating something beautiful with friends,” Gerber said. “To put something out there in the world. The opportunity to create something is such a great thing. The process of creating is so natural to being human.”
This vision for creation has been conveniently and pleasingly similar for Hoard and Kern, which has allowed for such a unified vision of a publishing house. This vision comes in part from their shared education at Hillsdale.
“I think the classical liberal arts obviously informed the way we approach many things — this commitment to beauty, this commitment to truth — not in an overt way, but in a nuanced way,” Howard said. “But we don’t gain it in a way that makes us hoarders, rather, particularly as we transition into this maternal role, we have a great desire to steward what we have received and to give it to our children, and to give it to them in forms that they can make sense of. I have a negative desire to sit down and to read the Nicomachean Ethics to my child. We invite them to participate with we’ve learned in accordance with their frame.”
The common approach to learning, beauty, and the world itself provided a path for the two to a shared goal and mutual encouragement.
“We are approaching the same goal from very compatible perspectives,” Kern said. “She has goals from the literary side, and I share those goals from a visual perspective. It’s been so much fun to work together and to encourage each other. We share so much as mothers, as believers, and as Hillsdale grads.”
