Children’s book author and artist Linda Gruenberg is a horse lover at heart. She has done every possible thing you can do with horses, including having them mow the lawn, drive single and double, rake the hay field with a horse-drawn rake, swim, jump logs and ditches, vault, stand in the saddle to pick apples—you get the point. It’s only fitting that her lifelong passion led her to write Hummer, a heartwarming middle-grade novel about a forlorn girl whose life is changed by an Arabian horse and its owner.
As Linda conveys, if you have horses, neighbor kids eventually show up, and she loves getting a child up on a horse and seeing their eyes light up. She even formed a vaulting club in order to teach kids how to safely ride her horses. Linda enjoys sharing her love of horses with children.
Linda likes starting out a book concept by asking, “What if…?” and churning that question in her mind until it turns into a story. She believes that strong and memorable characters are so integral to a great story, and she can hear her characters’ voices sometimes, propelling her into deep characterization. It’s during these times that she even enjoys the company of her characters. She hopes that her story’s characters allow her readers to step into someone else’s shoes for a while and help them see the world from a different perspective and build empathy.
When Linda isn’t writing uplifting stories of self-discovery for middle-graders, she enjoys painting watercolors of horses, carving, restoring horse-drawn vehicles, building hitching posts, and any other horse-related project. She also plays the hammered dulcimer, a percussion stringed instrument dating to 900 A.D.
Linda is an American enjoying life in Lapland, Sweden, after living in Northern Michigan for many years. She and her partner have two horses along with a family of hares and some wild reindeer who sometimes frolic in their yard.
Originally published thirty years ago by Houghton-Mifflin, Hummer was nominated for the prestigious Mark Twain Book Award and the Golden Sowers Award. Linda’s newly revised and relaunched edition, published by Kenda Press, features charming new pencil illustrations and a fresh cover design.
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