Alvin Tresselt and book Hide and Seek Fog

[Mary Marguerite Ludwick <ludwick@TENET.EDU>]

I have a budding research librarian on my hands! :)
Last spring a first grader questioned the meaning of the word
"spoddle" in the book Hide and Seek Fog.  None of my
resources or anyone on LM_Net's resources came up with
the answer.
  His mother , teacher and I determined the meaning from the
context and decided that Tresselt had invented a word for
the book......Not to be stymied, the mother/son wrote to
Alvin Tresselt and inquired.  In July they received a very
nice note from Tresselt (complete with typing mistakes!)
explaining the word as well as saying that ever since the
book was published he has had to explain the word.
   It is a word his mother (from England) had used in his
youth.  ...When questioned, Tresselt had had to justify the
word.  In a regional British dictionary the word -spuddle-
is defined and he feels that the dialect from his mother's
county changed the word to spoddle....It means to dig
carelessly, to stir or mak a fuss.  His mother used it to
mean playing idly in the water, as he did in the book.
 ...So now we have "the rest of the story."
   I feel that Cory learned a great lesson on getting to
the source of questions that will stay with him forever!

Mary Ludwick, MLS         Ludwick@tenet.edu
Librarian, B. B. Owen Elementary (grades K-5) A Blue Ribbon School
The Colony, Tx.   (about 30 miles north of Dallas, Texas)

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