Little Pearl's Circus World
by Charmain Zimmerman Brackett
This looks so cool! A non-fiction picture book about the author's great-grandmother, Pearl Clark LaComa (1890-1927). Pearl was the daughter of Mack Loren "M.L." Clark, who owned the M.L. Clark and Son's Combined Shows. Their wagon circus traveled throughout the United States from 1894 until 1945. The family sold the circus after M.L.'s death in 1926. Pearl started off as contortionist but after marrying her husband, Cris LaComa, she took to the air on a trapeze.
How cool is that! The author also shares insight on how the book was made in the article, Circus Roots.
Book Synopsis - Before she was 5 years-old, Little Pearl Clark was performing in her father's circus, the M.L. Clark and Son's Combined Shows. Join Little Pearl behind the scenes of her circus world. Little Pearl's Circus World is based on the true story Pearl Clark LaComa (1890-1927).
Circus Roots
It started as a way to preserve her
family heritage, but it resulted in an illustrated children's book based on her
great-grandmother's life in the circus.
About three years ago, Charmain
Zimmerman Brackett had a chance meeting with some long-lost cousins.
"I grew up in Georgia, and most
of my dad's family lived in Las Vegas. I didn't really get to know his side of
the family," she said. "One of my cousins moved to Georgia, and I
went with my parents to meet her and her sister who was visiting from Las
Vegas."
Her cousin, Becky Bagshaw, was
interested in genealogy and spent the next few hours telling Brackett about
their family's circus history. Their great-grandmother, Pearl Clark LaComa, had
been part of a circus owned by LaComa's father, Mack Loren "M.L."
Clark. And their grandmother, Juanita
LaComa Zimmerman, had wanted to be a writer. She wrote down snippets of her
circus memories in spiral-bound notebooks.
Bagshaw promised to send photocopies of pictures and these journals when
she returned to Las Vegas, and she did.
"The box she sent me was full
of my grandmother's writings and copies of photographs. It was fascinating to
me, but it saddened me at the same time because I never knew any of this when
my grandmother was alive," said Brackett.
Over the next two years, Brackett
went on a quest to pull as much circus information together as possible. She
traveled to Baraboo, Wis. to research at the Robert L. Parkinson Library and
Research Center and to Alexandria, La. where her family's circus had its winter
headquarters.
She spent countless hours on the
Internet.
She gathered family photos from
other relatives in Texas and Washington state.
"At first, I thought I'd do
something just for my family. I wanted to put the photographs together in one
place in a medium that could be passed down from generation to generation.
After posting a few photographs of my grandmother on social media, I discovered
other people were as interested in my family as I was," she said.
With her journalistic background,
she had hoped to write a non-fiction work about her great-grandparents' lives,
but despite her efforts, she couldn't find enough information. So she went to Plan
B - write a children's book based on the notes her grandmother had written.
There was enough information for that. She enlisted Erica Pastecki, an artist
and art teacher, to create paintings which would be used as the basis for the
illustrations. Brackett also hired Ashlee Henry to do the design of the book.
In November 2014, Little Pearl's
Circus World was published.
And on Jan. 3, readers at The Kindle
Hub voted her book as the Best Children's Book of 2014.
"It's really exciting to see
people get behind this project. I'm thrilled with the way the book turned out,
and I can't wait to see where it leads," she said.
Bio
- Charmain Zimmerman Brackett started her writing career while still in college
joining the sports staff of the local paper as a correspondent taking high
school sports stats. She's continued working for that same newspaper for more
than 27 years. She published her first novel, The Key of Elyon, in 2012, and it
was awarded the 2014 Yerby Award for Fiction at the Augusta Literary Festival.
website/blog - www.charmainzbrackett.com
twitter
- @CZBrackett
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