Tiller and Cummiskey publish second children’s book

FAIRFIELD – Friends and former naturalists Therese Cummiskey and Brittney Tiller have published their second children’s book together, this one featuring wetland creatures.

The book is called “The Adventures of Toad and Timberdoodle: Wading Into Wetlands,” and is available to purchase on amazon.com. The book was written by Tiller and Cummiskey, and illustrated by Denise Venteicher, who also illustrated Tiller and Cummiskey’s first book together called “The Adventures of Toad and Timberdoodle: Leaving Winter Behind,” which they published in 2022.

Just as in the first book, this most recent book follows the characters Toad and Timberdoodle as they learn about other animals and how they have adapted to their habitat. The two main characters in the book are based on the actual nicknames given to Cummiskey (Toad) and Tiller (Timberdoodle) during their time as Jefferson County Naturalists. Cummiskey was the county’s naturalist for 30 years until she retired in 2019, when Tiller assumed the role and held it until she stepped down in December.

Cummiskey and Tiller love giving programs on wetland animals, but they noticed that they knew of no children’s books that dealt with Midwest wetland wildlife specifically.

“When I would lead a summer camp or field trip, I would read the kids a book to get them excited about it,” Tiller said. “I would say, ‘This is a great book, but obviously we don’t have alligators in Iowa.’”

Cummiskey said the decision to focus on wetlands was easy, but the hard part was choosing which animals to feature.

“Everybody who knows me knows that I love adaptations,” Cummiskey said. “I love the adaptations that help them to survive in the wild. When we started to work on this book, we thought of which [wildlife] has really cool adaptations.”

Cummiskey said Tiller does the bulk of the writing, while she serves as a nature consultant. They put their heads together and landed on four wetland creatures to profile: a crayfish, a great blue heron, a salamander tadpole and a dragonfly larva.

“The dragonfly ‘teenager’ is our favorite character,” Cummiskey said. “It has air tubes in its rear end, and as it sucks in water, it gets the oxygen out of the water, and then it can shoot that water outs its bum.”

Tiller added, “What kid doesn’t want to learn about jet-propulsion toots?”

Last school year, Farm Bureau Financial Services in Fairfield purchased 340 copies of Tiller and Cummiskey’s first book so that every first-grader could have one at Fairfield, Pekin, Cardinal, Van Buren and Maharishi schools, as well as homeschool students. Tiller and Cummiskey went on tour to present the books to the students in their classrooms and read it to them. The pair said this experience gave them a good idea of which passages grabbed the students’ attention, and that influenced how they wrote their second book.

“Sometimes we noticed, ‘Oh, that was too many words. We lost their attention,’” Tiller said of reading to the kids.

Tiller said that, instead of trying to teach kids three facts about each animal, she and Cummiskey wanted to focus on a single fact that would be easy to remember. Cummiskey said doing all those readings in the classroom helped them figure out a better rhythm for a children’s book, too.

“We would change [the book] while we were reading it,” Cummiskey said.

“By the end of our book readings, we weren’t reading our book anymore,” Tiller said. “We were paraphrasing and editing on the go.”

Their first book has sold more than 1,000 copies. They remember their first public book reading, where they brought 100 copies thinking they wouldn’t sell them all, but they did.

This second book began with Tiller writing a storyline and presenting it to Cummiskey for further refinement. Tiller read what they wrote to her own kids to see how they would react.

“When I read a fact, I would look at their expressions and I could see if the lightbulb was on or not,” Tiller said. “We had to reword things because it didn’t click with them. I love the writing and brainstorming part, but not the editing.”

The two authors said they’re not planning an extensive book tour this time around, so anyone who would like to hear them read it is invited to attend their book reading at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 2 at the Fairfield Public Library. The illustrator Denise Venteicher will be there as well.

Tiller and Cummiskey said that, though they’ve enjoyed their collaboration, this will likely be the last book they publish.

“It might be our last book, but it won’t be our last adventure together,” Cummiskey said.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com