My books recall earlier times when young people readily learned about life and useful things from their elders. As apprentices, working alongside parents and grandparents, they watched, emulated, and eventually perfected a craft by which they would be known for all the rest of their lives. My stories are quilted from bits and pieces of history–tattered snapshots and historic photographs, rusty machines, hand-written letters and diaries, book illustrations, paintings, documents, engravings, old workplaces, newspaper articles, artifact collections in museums, and especially memories, tales from long ago vividly recalled for me and my tape recorder.