• R.I.P. Sylvia Hofsepian, 88, in Sep. 2020 (Why Not?, 1991)

    From Lenona@21:1/5 to All on Sun Feb 14 10:22:17 2021
    https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/southofboston-ledger/obituary.aspx?n=sylvia-a-hofsepian&pid=196769564

    First two-thirds:

    Sylvia A. Hofsepian of Abington (Massachusetts) passed away peacefully on September 1, 2020, at the Pat Roche Hospice Home in Hingham, at eighty-eight years of age. Her niece Karen was at her side. Sylvia was born in Boston and grew up in Boston and the
    Berkshires city of North Adams. She graduated from North Adams State Teachers College before returning to eastern Massachusetts in 1954. She was a beloved first-grade teacher who taught for five years at the North Elementary School and twenty-five years
    at the Woodsdale Elementary School, both in Abington. Because she loved teaching and wanted every child to have a good learning experience and see how exciting learning is, just before the beginning of each school year she would take her young niece
    Susan to school, and they would happily decorate the classroom with bright colors, pictures, and incentives for learning. After she retired, she wrote a children's book, "Why Not?", which was published in 1991 by Four Winds Press, an imprint of Macmillan
    Publishing Co. She was so happy to present the staff at Abington's Wales Library with her book, and according to The Patriot Ledger on September 16, 1991, the first children to read her story were the first-grade students at Woodsdale. Throughout her
    life, she loved birds and animals, and fed them and took care of them in her yard whenever she found them in need. She traveled all over the United States, was a bird-watcher, and skied in the winter. She loved to bake, listen to music, and knit and
    crochet beautiful gifts for her family and friends...

    (snip)

    About Why Not?, from School Library Journal:

    "A tale about a lonely, solemn widower who finds the coziness he's been wanting. Seeking company, he gets a cat from the cheerful bread woman. He and the cat, Ma Petite, prove to be perfect companions, except that she gets lonely when he leaves the house.
    Again consulting the bread woman, the man acquires yet another cat, Tashkin, for Ma Petite, but the first cat jealously maintains her place in the household, on the man's lap. When it appears that now Tashkin is lonely, the man seeks out help one last
    time and comes home with exactly what he needs--the bread woman as his wife and a lap for Tashkin. In the genuine tone of a traditional telling, Hofsepian weaves this quest for domestic happiness..."

    https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sylvia-a-hofsepian/why-not/
    (Kirkus review and cover)


    Lenona.

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