

Susan Stoderl
- Jul 29, 2022
- 2 min
Writer's Life | The Social Media Battle
In June, I began building a new website and updating social media sites from a composer/writer frame to an indie children’s book author heading toward two book launches. The ins and outs of using social media as a marketing tool have become a dreaded specter of my daily existence. Long before I began building my new Facebook (“FB”) and Instagram pages, I received notice that FB was taking down my old professional page since it had been unused for over three years. I wasn’t co



Susan Stoderl
- Jul 27, 2022
- 1 min
A Family by Choice — Not Blood
One of the major themes of Sophia of the Bright Red Sneakers series is the creation of her own unique family as an orphan. This would also apply to kids who have parents but still spend many hours alone. Pedro has living parents but is an only child. His parents work five and one-half days a week away from home, so he is often alone. Sophia and Pedro become de facto brother and sister, and BFF. The other chosen members of her unique family are all single adults, ranging in ag



Susan Stoderl
- Jul 22, 2022
- 1 min
Meet Zelda Screech Cat
Meet Zelda Screech Cat


Susan Stoderl
- Jul 21, 2022
- 2 min
Late Bloomer | Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter grew up isolated from other children since upper-middle-class girls did not attend school. Governesses privately educated her at home. Her love of botany, particularly fungi, came from her summers spent in Scotland and the Lake District of Northern England. Her drawings became legendary in their detail. In 1897, the thirty-one-year-old Potter wrote a scholarly paper on the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae (mushrooms) to the Linnean Society. Ge



Susan Stoderl
- Jul 20, 2022
- 1 min
Going Backwards
The aria speaks of life among the destitute in 19th-century New York City. That time is returning all over this country because women are being forced to have children even if they can't afford them. All "those preaching moral reform" do little or nothing to see that a child that is born is given a chance to lead a self-sustaining, productive life. My mother was one of those children. Her mother died in rural Colorado during childbirth in the depression, leaving several orpha


Susan Stoderl
- Jul 19, 2022
- 1 min
On Reading and Writing
Reading has always been my salvation from loneliness and moments of feeling bad within myself. Reading and writing transport me into a better space. A space in which I might deliver a laugh or move someone to tears. Where I can be someone else for a while. I do not cry easily and if something I read transports me to tears, then it is a godsend. From time to time, we all need to cry—to feel an emotional release from our many hidden fears. Ones we are probably not even aware of


Susan Stoderl
- Jul 18, 2022
- 0 min



Susan Stoderl
- Jul 15, 2022
- 1 min
Today Meet Wahoo the Raven, a very Dapper Dude
From Sophia of the Bright Red Sneakers Series | Mission 1: All in a Day's Work He looked around his home with pride. “My, my, my, I have an eye for décor.” The shelves held his prized shiny objects, such as an antique French parquetry and gilt clock. It was a surprise gift from Christie’s Auction House. As it was being unloaded, the antique had attached itself to his talons as he flew away. What was a gentleman raven to do if he liked pretty objects? Birds, no matter how dapp



Susan Stoderl
- Jul 14, 2022
- 1 min
Late Bloomer|Sassy Senior: Mary Wesley
Late Bloomer | Sassy Senior | Mary Wesley (1912-2002)



Susan Stoderl
- Jul 13, 2022
- 3 min
The Widow Was Ready to Write!
Last week in my Fanny Fern | A.F.R.A.I.D. Series, I wrote about the “Cult of True Womanhood,” also known as the “Cult of Domesticity.” This week I would like to look at the fate of being a widow with children and having no money. In A.F.R.A.I.D, (American Females for Righteousness, Abasement, Ignorance, and Docility), my opera of 2005, I wrote the libretto based on the writings of Fanny Fern and other pertinent sources of the 1850s to 1870s. Fanny Fern wrote from personal exp



Susan Stoderl
- Jul 12, 2022
- 2 min
Library Cards Save Lives
Books were the center of my life as a child. Until eleven years old, I was an only child and mostly cared for by my elderly grandparents. I spent countless hours alone. My mother lived separately and worked during the day but would often read to me in the evening. The first book I remember was The Tall Book of Fairy Tales by Eleanor Graham Vance, with illustrations by William Sharp. There was another larger book, which I believe was a collection of tall tales like "Johnny App


Susan Stoderl
- Jul 11, 2022
- 0 min


Susan Stoderl
- Jul 8, 2022
- 1 min
Introducing the Cru Crew
From Sophia and the Bright Red Sneakers, Mission 1: All in a Day's Work. Meet Ella Cru "As if to remind Sophia of her status, standing in front of the door to Mrs. Dumfries’s classroom was Ella Cru, a.k.a., Cruella the Creep. Ella was the prettiest and the richest. Her highlighted chestnut locks always glistened. The ugly bag dress even looked elegant on her. Though Ella instigated her share of evil, she always appeared to be one step from sainthood." Meet Suzy Snodgrass "Suz


Susan Stoderl
- Jul 6, 2022
- 2 min
Fanny Fern and the Cult of True Womanhood
"The Cult of Domesticity" or "True Womanhood," was established for the wives and daughters of the white American middle- and upper-class power-hungry during the antebellum period. Proper, partially educated wives became status symbols for their husbands. At the opposite end of the spectrum, women, married or unmarried, lacked the means to remain "pure.” Many servant girls were impregnated, often against their will, then tossed out the door to a workhouse or hyper-religious mi



Susan Stoderl
- Jul 1, 2022
- 2 min
Meet Pedro Gonzalez
Pedro Gonzalez is Sophia’s best friend and co-conspirator in sleuthing and improving the world one mission at a time. He is ten years old, almost eleven, and a scholarship student at the James Samuel Calder Academy. He has two strikes against him—low income and he’s Brown. But this does not stop him from always being positive and kind. Plus, he’s about as smart as Sophia, which also does not go over very well with the reigning Cru Crew in the eighth-grade honors class. Sophia