Sue Katz

Children's writer Sue Katz has published several books for children and helps with a variety of children's poetry contests.  Please visit her cyber office for inspirations! 

Native Inspired Poetry by Children Visiting Museums.  Please click on this website link for a look at Native inspired poetry by children.

Among her works are Snowdrops for Cousin Ruth (June, 1998), and the poetry collection, Mrs. Brown on Exhibit and Other Museum Poems (July, 2002), The Revolutionary Mrs. Brown and Other Poems of Colonial Life (Simon and Schuster/2004).  Looking for Jaguar and Other Rainforest Poems (Greenwillow-Harper Collins/2005).  Oh Theodore! Guinea Pig Poems (2008).

National Children's Choice Book Award Finalist!
Carla Messinger & Sue Katz authors of the children’s book When the Shad Bush Blooms (Fall 2007)

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Colonial Quiz with Answers & Links Below 

Frog Poems    Click on this link to read the winning poems here! 

Frog Information Link

Little Flower dancing  

   A Colonial Quiz

If you need proof of how much things have changed in America in 300 years or so, see if you can answer the following simple questions: (Answers can be found below.)

1. What do you do with a whimmy diddle?

a. eat it    b. play with it     c. wear it around your neck

2. Who would be most interested in pickadill?

a. an eight-year-old     b. a blacksmith     c. a woman using a spinning wheel

3. What would you do if you found a catamount in your yard?

a. pick it and hang it up to dry     b. store it in a safe place     c. shoot it with your flintlock

4. Where in your house was a spider a necessity in colonial times?

a. the kitchen     b. the garden     c. the barn     

5. You have to eat one of the following colonial dishes at lunchtime today.

Which one will it be?    a. crowdy     b. hush puppies     c. flummery

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AND HERE ARE THE ANSWERS:

1. You play with a whimmy diddle; it’s a notched stick with a propeller blade on the end – when you rub the notches with a second stick, the blade rotates. You can use it to predict the future by asking yes or no questions and seeing which way the blade spins (to the right is yes, to the left is no). This is the colonial era’s version of a Magic 8-ball. :)

2. Since pickadill is a form of tag played in the snow, it would be of most interest to an eight-year-old.

3. A catamount is a wildcat, so shooting it would be your safest option.

4. A spider was a long-handled frying pan with three legs that you would have used to cook over the open fireplace in your kitchen.

5. If you chose crowdy, you’ll be lunching on thick oatmeal.

     If you picked hush puppies, you won’t be eating shoes; you’ll be eating cornmeal balls fried with fish. They got their name because any dogs around the cooking fire always whined for a taste.

     If you selected flummery, you chose berry juice sweetened and then thickened with cornstarch. (Though my grandmother didn’t call this flummery, she used to make it for me when I was a little girl, and I highly recommend it.)                                 *********************

-- If you weren’t familiar with any of the terminology in this quiz, don’t feel bad. (Neither was the author of A Revolutionary Field Trip before she started researching her book.)

-- If you were able to answer two or more of the questions correctly, you’re probably a leading light in your local historical society.

-- If nothing here was new to you, perhaps you should be writing a book of your own.

--More about life in the "good old days" can be found at:  Mrs. Brown

This quiz was composed by Susan Katz  author of A Revolutionary Field Trip