Sharrol Frederick’s writings may not go down in the annals of major literary history.
But she hopes they’ll make an impact, especially on young people who need the kind of encouragement that enabled Frederick to think, and push, past the barriers life threw in her way.
They’re also sure to be pretty entertaining to little ones who share Frederick’s love for … pickles.
Frederick overcame dyslexia, and the stigma that came with it, to write two books featuring pickle characters.
The first book, All About Pickles ($19.79 at Amazon.com), came out in 2011 as a self-published paperback by Xlibris. Containing illustrations by Frederick and Demar Hinton, the book introduces Mr. Hunter Chilly Dilly, a pickle who lives by himself in a “big pickle house” and who “would like to get married and have pickle kids.” He goes to church and meets Miss Presley Pickle Dill, whom he takes out and whom he hopes will be his bride.
Hunter gets his wish. The relationship blossoms; the couple marry and have a pickle baby named Aidan, then another, Julia. A dog and cat join the family too.
The new book, Pickles Play Baseball, is scheduled for release this spring by Tate Publishing Co. It’s about pickle characters who form a baseball team after being rejected by others because of their disabilities.
“We’re just delighted to be working with Sharrol and think she’s got a wonderful book incorporating sports and recreation into friendship and acceptance,” says Mark Mingle, director of marketing for Tate Publishing. “I think it’s just a great, fun kids’ book we’re very excited about.”
Why pickles?
“They’re bright. They’re colorful.
And I like to eat them sometimes,” Frederick replies.
Frederick sold her first book through word of mouth and through Facebook. It garnered her a handful of positive reviews on Amazon.com, as well as interviews with KARK-TV, Channel 4, the Sherwood Voice and AY magazine.
Originally from New Orleans, Frederick, 51, moved to Arkansas nearly 30 years ago to baby-sit for her sister, who’d relocated here earlier. Now living in Sherwood, Frederick has worked part time busing tables at Gadwall’s Grill in North Little Rock for more than 20 years.
As a child in special education classes, Frederick struggled. “Learning was very hard for me; reading was very hard for me,” she says. “I saw some of my words backwards.” And she took some bullying because of it. “I had to listen to a lot of negative stuff,” she says. “My sister used to have to stick up for me a lot.
I used to get real angry and get mad and want to do revenge sometimes, get back at them sometimes.
“But my mom and my church taught me [that] instead of something negative, [I should] do something positive.”
MEANS OF ESCAPE
So she began writing, which helped her relax and feel a little better. “You can arrange it any way you want, your writing,” she says. “And I chose [to write for] children because I get along with children better and I’m more at their level.” She understands the issues they face because of what she has been through. “And I can help them, talk to them about [things].”
Frederick’s pickle characters date to the 1970s. She’s worked with the characters and their storylines off and on throughout the years. Meanwhile, she continued to struggle with reading.
A couple of years ago, she worked with a tutor, Jean Harrison. At Frederick’s church, First Baptist in Sherwood, “a lady overheard me saying that I wanted to learn how to read the Bible,” Frederick recalls. Harrison offered to tutor her. Working through the agency Literacy Action of Central Arkansas, “she started teaching me how to read all the way from the bottom up, because I didn’t know my sounds properly,” Frederick says. “When you don’t know your sounds properly, you can’t make heads or tails.”
Frederick remembers when she was able to read a book all the way through, without stumbling. It was the Louisa May Alcott classic, Little Women. Now, Frederick says, she loves reading. Other literary favorites include Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie.
Harrison, also of Sherwood and a retired civilian employee of the Air Force who taught school for a year, praises Frederick as “a sweetheart” who’s “very appreciative of any kindness shown her way.” Her tutoring of Frederick, she recalls, was intermittent due to an injury Frederick sustained in an accident and her visits home to New Orleans; it ended when Harrison became ill. Although she believes Frederick would be further along in her reading skills had they been able to keep up the sessions, “I think she’s done well,” Harrison says. “I think she’s progressed.”
Before the two women met, Frederick decided to act on a desire to self-publish her first pickle-character book.
“I called around and asked friends that wrote books, and they kind of told me what to do, how to do it,” Frederick says. “So I just went home one day and just started writing - and then drawing” pickles with humanoid features.
Frederick says she has more than 1,000 pickle characters. Some dance; some act; some play sports. “They just [have] their own personality and their own likes, just like humans.”
In addition to the Dilly family, other characters, including playmates and schoolteachers, are woven into All About Pickles, as is Frederick, via a character bearing her name. Even Gadwall’s Grill is mentioned.
BROADENED HORIZONS
An author friend of Frederick’s sister told Tate about Frederick - “and they called me,” she says.
“They even asked me if I had any more books and I told them all the [unpublished] books that I have written over the years and they’re interested in every last one of them. They feel I’m onto something. They said I’m kind of like the next Cat in the Hat, but with pickles. … They’re just real pleased that they’re involved with it.”
Harrison got an early peek at Pickles Play Baseball, in a glossy, board-book format. That Frederick does the artwork “impresses me as much as her writing,” Harrison says. “And the fact that she can express herself as well as she does with [the limited] reading ability that she has - I think that’s remarkable, too.”
Storylines of subsequent books will include themes, such as bullying.
“The pickles have no tolerance for bullying” or prejudice, Frederick says. “They just don’t want hatred. And I’m trying to teach the younger generation to accept people the way they are.”
Frederick says her goal is to be able to go full time into the world of her pickle characters. She’d like to see them depicted as toys, on clothes and jewelry … and featured in songs and a movie.
“I keep dreaming [of introducing] Pickles in 3-D. I’m a dreamer,” she says.
She also dreams of appearing on some national shows to promote her books. She has been sending letters out, with visions of going on ABCTV’s Good Morning America as well as talk shows. She has also sent copies of her book to President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton.
“I hope she’s a millionaire before it’s over,” Harrison says, citing Frederick’s desire to take care of her brother with cerebral palsy. “She said that was her main goal, to make enough money to help him and get him a computer so he can learn and do things. … I think that’s terrific.”
Meanwhile, having gone to a few schools and read her books in classrooms, Frederick is investigating the possibility of getting her books in local schools and to children with reading problems and dyslexia. She hopes, she says, to inspire her readers to follow the advice her mother gave her: do something positive, and tune out the negative.
“I’m happy now,” she says. “I’m just happy. I found peace.”
Family, Pages 34 on 01/29/2014