Finding the wompoopus

Dad’s tales take life in daughter’s book

A wompoopus as illustrated by Laura Ballard in the book Harold and the Wompoopus, written by Allison Slinkard Krieger, who grew up in Rogers. The book is based on childhood stories told to Krieger by her father, Howard Slinkard.
A wompoopus as illustrated by Laura Ballard in the book Harold and the Wompoopus, written by Allison Slinkard Krieger, who grew up in Rogers. The book is based on childhood stories told to Krieger by her father, Howard Slinkard.

Playing in the cotton fields in the evening, the boys heard an eerie sound echoing over the fields of Northeast Arkansas.

“Ut ut ut ut aroooooooooo!”

Those boys — Howard Slinkard and his seven siblings, along with nephews — grew up on a farm in Trumann. They grew up and had children and grandchildren, telling them stories of the mythical wompoopus and the creature’s otherworldly cry.

Howard moved to Northwest Arkansas in the 1970s. He has served as city attorney for Pea Ridge, Garfield, Centerton and Tontitown over the past four decades and retired at the end of 2016.

Allison Slinkard Krieger, who grew up in Rogers, loved the stories her father told her and her sisters when they were children. The tale of the wompoopus caught her fancy and, when she became a mother, she decided to write a children’s book about it, making it less frightening, she said.

“It was kind of scary (the way her father told the story),” she recalled, “so I made it more child-friendly.”

Allison wrote the book —

Howard and the Wompoopus

— when she was pregnant with Conrad, who is now 17 months old. She expects another child this summer.

“I know that there’s many of you out there skeptical of the existence of wompoopus, and though never having actually spotted one, I’ve heard the call many, many times,” Slinkard said in a video for Krieger’s book promotion, as he then howled like the wompoopus.

Allison said the character is the biggest part of a story. Knowing the wompoopus is a great character, she decided to write about it.

“The rhyme just came to me … and I wrote the whole book. It felt good,” she said. “I felt like it was a great idea.”

She met an artist, Laura Ballard, when she lived Kansas City. Allison contacted her about illustrating the book, and she agreed.

“(Ballard) spent about a school year illustrating all the pages … we found Mascot (a publishing company) somewhere during the process,” she said.

And what does Howard Slinkard think of it?

“When I was a little girl, he would make the call when he was coming down the hall,” she recalled.

“The character is rather illusive,” she said, adding “(My father is) kind of illusive on his own … he keeps to himself,” Allison shared. “He’s excited that it’s out there in the world.”

“It was just something we always heard,” Slinkard said of the wompoopus. “My dad, when I was just a kid, used to talk about the wompoopus. I’ve passed that story around to my grandchildren all these years.”

As for his daughter writing down the family tale?

“I’m very proud of her. She called me up one day and told me about it. I said, ‘Well that’s good,’ not convinced that it would ever happen. I’m really proud of her that she saw that through … It was a challenge for her, but she’s done real good.”

Now, the next task will be to write about the other character her father told her about, the tushamondigger.

“We’ll see how that goes,” she said, a smile spreading across her face.

Allison graduated from Rogers High School in 2000. She gradauted from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, with a degree in speech communications. She then earned her law degree — just like her dad — and has worked in project management for Walmart and Cargill. She and her husband and son live in Seattle, Wash.

Howard and the

Wompoopus

allisonkrieger.com/book-page

Annette Beard can be reached by email at [email protected].

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