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Dear Aunt Bea: A Journal of a Journey is about a ten-year-old child whose family migrates from the flat American Midwest to the mountainous Northeast for a change of lifestyle. Without sibling, pet, or friend, Jimi makes daily solo treks through the neighboring meadows, hills and forests to collect nature treasures for art and study. With a growing, keen curiosity about the new environment, Jimi decides to explore many questions and observations by writing in a journal to a trusted adult (Aunt Bea). Reflecting on climate changes, how people interact with each other, and what is everyone's place in a community habitat, Jimi creates some answers and finds some unexpected, beautiful friends.
About the author
Rebecca Cummins grew up exploring the state parks and caves of southern Indiana and the farm fields and muddy creeks of central Illinois. She learned many native species of the Midwest through the influence and guidance of her father, mother, uncle, and aunt. Later, she studied to be a teacher at Eastern Illinois University, to be a principal at Western Illinois University, and to be a writer at the Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College, in Vermont. Migrating from the flat heartlands to the mountains of Vermont, she now lives along a precious mountain brook, where Jimi (with the wisdom of a child) comes to teach her how to think about unfamiliar, challenging, and sometimes scary, environments-in society as well as in nature.
