Notable natives

Bill Clinton is one famous Arkansan, yes, and Sam Walton, Johnny Cash, Daisy Bates … and who else?

Pop quiz, boys and girls: Name 17 other famous Arkansans.

Steven Teske does in his children’s book, Natural State Notables: 21 Famous People From Arkansas (53 pages, $9.95), new from Butler Center Books in Little Rock.

Among 14 men and seven women, Teske also names and writes about novelist John Grisham, singer Jimmy Driftwood and former U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln, each a two-page biography.

He wrote the book generally with fourth grade readers in mind, Teske says, and with hopes that “it will be useful to teachers and other educators.”

The book opens with special thanks to his and wife Robin’s 10-year-old daughter, Olivia, “who read each chapter.”

Youngest of the Teskes’ seven children, Olivia was exactly the right age to point out where dad used a word too big or too grown up for a child’s vocabulary, the author says.

The story of Ebony magazine founder John H. Johnson’s childhood in Arkansas, for example, is one time Teske relied on his daughter’s advice. He wrote that Johnson once “had to live on a levee.” Thanks to editor Olivia’s question - what’s a levee? - the book goes on to explain, “a strip of high ground,” the place to be in a flood.

“She was a big help,” Teske says.

Teske writes whenever he can make time outside of his job in the archives of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock. Natural State Notables is the author’s first children’s book.

Also, he co-wrote (with Velma B. Branscum Woody) a young adult history book, Homefront Arkansas: Arkansans Face Wartime; and for adult readers, Unvarnished Arkansas: The Naked Truth About Nine Famous Arkansans, all from Butler Center Books.

BIG LIVES IN BRIEF

Unvarnished Arkansas deals with a different set of notables, people who were famous from a century and more back in time.

For grown-up readers, Teske recounts such unlikely stories as those of Sandy Faulkner from the 1800s, and Bernie Babcock from the turn of the 19th century.

Failed at business and politics, Faulkner awarded himself the title of “Col. Faulkner.” He was famous for spinning his tale of the Arkansas Traveler, Teske writes, and was so loved for it that Faulkner County is named for him. Babcock founded the Museum of Natural History and Antiquities in Little Rock, where she exhibited “the head of a Chicago criminal” in a bottle.

For children’s reading, Teske veered from the state’s more “controversial” history. Instead, he points to such inspirational figures as poet Maya Angelou, singing pastor Al Green, and actress Mary Steenburgen.

Writing for children called for shorter sentences and more recent history, Teske says. He looked for names that youngsters might already have heard.

FAMOUS AND FAMOUSER

“People who are famous have done something that many other people notice,” he explains in the preface to Natural State Notables. But some are a lot famous, and others less. Some, although famous, he writes, “might be new to you.”

Ruth Beall, Samuel Kountz and Hazel Walker, for example, were famous in their time for achievements that lasted, even if their names aren’t so well-remembered as Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller’s.

Beall, Teske writes, “saved Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock from closing during the Great Depression.” She raised money to keep the hospital open, and kept herself going on thrifty cheese sandwiches “so more could be spent helping sick children.”

“A wonderful story,” Teske says.

Kountz made a surgical specialty of kidney transplants, and today’s operations are “easier and safer” thanks to him, Teske reports.

Walker was a pioneer in women’s basketball. She owned, managed and played for the Arkansas Travelers, a women’s team that journeyed “town to town,” Teske writes, “taking on a different team each night.” Walker’s team almost always scored highest, and she claimed having won all of 3,500 free throw contests.

In choosing names, Teske “tried to get a diversity of different careers, young women, different places in Arkansas,” always knowing that he wouldn’t have room for every famous Arkansan in one book.

Pop quiz: The book cites William Dillard, Bette Greene, J.B. Hunt, Scottie Pippen, Rodney Slater and Donald Tyson as “Natural State Notables.” What other names might be just as famous?

“I would love to do another book,” Teske says.