“C is for Cannon Beach” is Karen Leedom’s latest picture book. She has written similar titles about Astoria and Sunriver.
Did you know Haystack Rock, Tillamook Head, Arch Cape and Saddle Mountain were formed by lava flows from the Blue Mountains and Columbia Basin?
Or that puffins can flap their wings up to 400 beats per minute, reaching speeds of 55 miles per hour?
These are just a couple of the fascinating tidbits from Karen Leedom’s new picture book, “C is for Cannon Beach.”
In collaboration with artist Sally Lackaff, Leedom hopes to enlighten and entertain readers with playful alphabet rhymes, flora and fauna trivia, cultural oddities and historical facts.
“I’ve always been curious about the places I’ve lived in,” said Leedom, who mused that she attended “I-5 High,” having been in 10 different high schools up and down the California-Oregon corridor as her Navy father changed postings. Later, living in Oregon, she frequented Cannon Beach, where her husband’s family has ties dating back to the 1920s.
Author Karen Leedom and illustrator Sally Lackaff.
“I love Cannon Beach and Astoria,” Leedom said. “We’d built a house at Surf Point, but moved to Astoria in 2002, and I wanted to learn everything I could about its history. Books, I thought, where are the books about Astoria?”
Leedom found one: “Astoria: Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains,” by Washington Irving, written at the behest of John Jacob Astor and published in 1836, but, she noted, “a lot of stuff happens in 200 years.”
She decided to research and write a history herself, resulting in “Astoria, An Oregon History,” published in 2008 by a small press in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The book’s initial 1,500 copies sold out, but unfortunately, before the next printing, the press ran into financial trouble and folded.
After much wrangling, Leedom regained control of her Astoria book files and decided, with her background in desktop publishing, that she had the skills to republish it herself. Thus, she created Rivertide Publishing.
Her interest in Astoria, and her fondness for rhyming — Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses” was a childhood favorite — led to her next writing and publishing venture: “A is for Astoria,” in partnership with the late illustrator Sally Bailey, which was released in 2010.
Leedom found that experience so enjoyable that she published “S is for Sunriver,” celebrating a cherished family vacation spot.
In 2022, she was hired by the Cannon Beach History Center & Museum to remake “Cannon Beach: A Place by the Sea” by Terence O’Donnell, first published in 1996. The book was out of print and the original manuscript was nowhere to be found. Working with museum staff and Rainmar Bartl, the updated book is now available.
Now, that research is on display again with her newest picture book, “C is for Cannon Beach.”
She also continues to help others realize their writing ambitions, offering copy editing, proofing, and imagining through Rivertide Publishing.
“My daughter has accused me of having Impostor Syndrome, that feeling of, I don’t belong with other authors,” Leedom said. “Then I look at these books and say, ‘Oh, I guess I did write them.’”
This post was originally published on here
