JOAN C. YINGLING
1930 – 2008
Mom was a spirited woman who enjoyed nothing more than getting together with family and friends. She taught herself how to cook, bake, sew, knit, and crochet among other things. She was an avid reader and loved doing the crossword puzzles in the Sunday paper. She was a huge fan of the Philadelphia Eagles and while watching a game she would yell at that TV like nobody’s business. With such a busy life raising seven children and working full time as a hairdresser, it’s hard to know how she found time to write the many poems/stories she wrote while we were growing up.
When mom and dad downsized and sold the house we grew up in, I happily took possession of the raggedy folder her poems occupied. Over the years, I have often thought about getting mom’s work published but I didn’t know the first thing about publishing and the project just kept being pushed aside.
As fate would have it, our oldest daughter’s first job out of college was with a publishing company. She knew of my desire to publish my mom’s work and one day presented me with the brilliant idea of creating a children’s books series with mom’s poems.
The Story of The Can’t That Could was the first children’s book we released in September 2019. Soon after, it became the recipient of the Mom’s Choice Award for Excellence and the recipient of a First Place Dragonfly Book Award. More recently, this book granted mom a nomination for a 2020 Author Academy Award. The storybook has been so well received that a second edition was printed just four months after its initial release.
We chose to publish The Story of The Curious Elf as the second book in the series because it too, had been a family favorite. We hope both these stories become favorites for your family as well.
Lydia Yingling Cohn
Joan C. Yingling 