Annually, a book is selected in Nebraska to be the focus of reading and discussion throughout the state. This year, the book selected for the One Book, One Nebraska honor is "Restoring the Burnt Child" by William Kloefkorn. Author Kloefkorn is Nebraska’s state poet and emeritus professor of English at Nebraska Wesleyan University. He is the author of many volumes of poetry and two other memoirs, "This Death by Drowning" and "At Home on This Moveable Earth", both published by the University of Nebraska Press.

"Restoring the Burnt Child" is the second volume in William Kloefkorn’s four-part memoir, which covers the four elements: water, fire, earth, and air. Negotiating the no man’s land between ages nine and thirteen, this memoir of a small-town boy’s life in 1940s Kansas continues the story Kloefkorn began in his much-loved volume "This Death by Drowning".

With characteristic humor and in prose as lyrical as his poetry, he describes the unsentimental education he received at the hands of the denizens of Urie’s Barber Shop and the Rexall Drugstore and at the knees of the true characters who made up his family. From the "firefly" stunt that nearly burns down his home to the distant firestorms of World War II, fire presents an endless range of subtle and surprising lessons for the young Kloefkorn. The author conveys his boyhood impressions with the immediacy, naiveté, and poignancy of youth—and reconsiders those same impressions with the wisdom and distance of age. "Restoring the Burnt Child" powerfully brings to life the lost, unforgettable world of a boy, and of a poet, coming of age in mid-century, Middle-West America. The Bison Books edition is updated with a set of discussion questions for book groups.

As real treat for Scottsbluff readers, the Friends of the Scottsbluff Public Library invited Kloefkorn to Scottsbluff for a presentation of his program, "O the Stories We Tell: Did That Really Happen?" next Sunday, June 22, 2008 at the library meeting room. The program begins at 2:00 p.m. and is co-sponsored by the Nebraska Humanities Council and "Emerging Voices" of Western Nebraska Community College.

Also, area writers should plan to attend a writer’s workshop, lead by Kloefkorn immediately following his hour-long presentation. Both events will be at the Scottsbluff Public Library; 1809 3^rd Ave. and are free and open to the public. Please call the library at 630-6250 for more information.

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Scottsbluff Public Library :: 1809 Third Avenue :: Scottsbluff, NE 69361 :: 308-630-6250