Author Shannon Basinger-Kotz and her eleven-year-old son and illustrator Vinny M.R. Kotz have a gift for weaving holiday magic. Last Christmas, they published their first book, The Little Lost Nutcracker. This year, they are celebrating the release of their second...

In 2011, the bald eagles of Decorah became an internet sensation when researchers at the Raptor Research Project began live streaming footage from a webcam installed near their nest. Seven years later, millions of viewers around the world still tune in each spring to...

In her latest children’s book—Will You Be My Friend?/Serás tú mi amigo?—Pella author Karen Fitzsimmons has a simple message: While it feels good to have a friend, it feels great to be a friend. “I wanted to get across to young readers what being a true friend is all...

“If you truly love the sport of fishing, you are no longer the one doing the catching,” said author and lifelong fisherman Ben Chiodo. “The fish have bagged you.” In his book Fishing: More Than a Passion—published this fall by the Write Place—Chiodo uses a mix of...

Carol Van Klompenburg, author and retired Write Place owner, and Sarah Purdy, our book editor and publishing consultant, will be featured presenters for an event at the Pella Public Library Meeting Room on September 11 at 7 p.m. The evening kicks off with a short...

Fortunate: The Fabulous, Fantastic Filly, written by Debbie Brady Shellady and illustrated by Victoria Peterson Laird, is the latest children’s book published by the Write Place. It tells the true story of Fortunate, a foal that is born three weeks before she is...

Carol Van Klompenburg, author and retired Write Place owner, started her first flower garden 25 years ago. “When I announced my plans to plant flowers in front of our house, my husband was skeptical,” she recalled. “I had tried a vegetable garden years earlier, and it...

“We all have problems,” said author Paul V. Zylstra of Bussey, Iowa. “We have these enemies at the root of our trials—the world, the flesh, and the devil—and through study of Scripture I’ve found that God has ways of helping us deal with them.” This is the main...

Flitterfly, written and illustrated by Barbara Schultz of Rose Hill, Iowa, is the latest children’s book published by the Write Place. It tells the story of Flitterfly, a dragonfly who lives on the land surrounding Schultz Pond. Over the course of a few sunny summer...

For lessons on calf roping, the memoir of Orange City veterinarian Dr. A.J. Neumann may not be an expert resource. But if the fascinating tale of a life that stretches through the Depression, World War II, and a decades-long career serving the farm families and...

The Joy of Forgiveness, written by Karen Fitzsimmons and illustrated by Rowena Hoover, is the latest juvenile fiction book published by the Write Place. It tells the story of Angel and Trouble, two teenagers who become best friends in spite of being as different as...

In 2010, a landowner in Mahaska County discovered the thirteen-thousand-year-old femur of a woolly mammoth lodged in the bank of a stream. The surprise find launched a massive dig that eventually uncovered bones from three different mammoths. Today, this...