Former Local Kindergarten Teacher Publishes a Book for Children

Wallingford resident Brenda Embrey Exon, once known to local kindergarteners as Mrs. X, will read from her children’s book at the Swarthmore Campus and Community Store on Sunday, March 1, at 1 p.m. Photo: Robert Stoller, Art In Motion

Moxie and his friend, Mr. Cat, are looking for a place to fly their kite. When they wander into a mostly open field with just one big tree in it, they think they’ve found it. What could go wrong?

The premise of Brenda Embrey Exon’s new children’s book, “Moxie and the Kite-Bite’n Ash,” is simple, but it took the first-time author a long while to bring that seed to fruition.

It also took a trip halfway around the world. Exon was living in Swarthmore in 1985 when her husband, Swarthmore College art professor Randall Exon, was selected as a Henry Luce Scholar. The honor took the couple for a year to Ubad, Bali, in Indonesia. There, Exon found time to both write the book and paint the 41 gouache illustrations of the boy and the cat’s adventures.

Spirits in the Trees

Exon had the germ of the story before she left Swarthmore, but she credits the Balinese children for teaching her that trees have spirits, an idea that became central to the book. “They actually walked me around, pointing out the names of different trees and talking about their spirits,” she says.

Even after finally finishing the book, it wasn’t easy to find a publisher. “The problem for Moxie,” Exon says, “is that I wrote the story in verse.” Editors were not interested in rhyming children’s books.

Meanwhile, Exon was busy with real children. In 1988, she was hired to teach kindergarten at Swarthmore Elementary School. She and her co-teacher, Kim Larson (now Kim Peichel), developed a curriculum around their passions: tide pools and monarch butterflies. The children called her Mrs. X, and she called them sweet potatoes. 

A Poet to the Rescue

Eventually Exon turned back to Moxie and Mr. Cat. In 2018, deciding that the verse still needed work, she found a professional poet to help. She showed the manuscript to Nathalie Anderson, author of five books of poetry and director of creative writing at Swarthmore College. “Lucky for Mox,” Exon says, “Nat really liked the story.” Together they tinkered and fine-tuned the book’s text. 

This time around, publishers were more receptive. She submitted the book to Austin Macauley, who accepted it in just six weeks. “The lesson learned,” Exon says: “persevere, persevere, persevere.”

The author will read her work at the Swarthmore College Campus and Community Store on Sunday, March 1, at 1 p.m. Store manager Paula Dale says of the book, “Younger kids will enjoy the verse and illustrations, while older children will enjoy realizing that there’s more to the tree than first appears.”

Exon’s sidekick, Arf-Arf, will also be at the event.

From “Moxie and the Kite-Bite’n Ash,” by Brenda Exon:

Here we see Moxie, a boy age ten,
Who stirs up mischief now and then.
A little too cocky, a little too bold,
Too big for his britches, so I am told.
Step over step, he is sneaking away,
Ignoring Mom’s rule, “Work before play!”