MUSCATINE, Iowa — Muscatine fifth-grader Mati Hepker made a connection with children’s  author Brenda Ferber during the Muscatine Community School District’s visiting author program Tuesday.

Ferber, of Deerfield, Ill.,  brought some special donations for Mati, 10, who is in the midst of her reign as Little Miss Iowa 2009, and her family.

Mati’s pageant platform  is literacy, and when Ferber learned she had a setback in her efforts to collect children’s books for Iowa’s homeless shelters, Ferber wanted to help.

Mati, of McKinley Elementary School, recently held a bake sale and book drive to collect books, but all those donations burned when her family’s home caught fire on Oct. 3.

Beth Elshoff, a teacher and librarian for Madison and Jefferson elementary schools, told Ferber about the Hepker family because she knew Ferber may be discussing her novel “Julia’s Kitchen,” which is about a young teen who loses a sister in a fire.

“I was so sorry to hear about the Hepker family, but I was relieved to hear that no lives were lost in the fire,”

said Ferber, who also donated a portion of her speaking fee to the family’s recovery fund.

Mati and her family — parents Matt and Trina Hepker, brothers Austin Moss, 13, and Dane, 7, and were not home when the fire broke out.

“It’s hard, said Mati. “But it’s bringing our family closer together.”

The fire that inspired Ferber’s book was more tragic.

“I was living in Austin, Texas, at the time, and there was a house fire in our neighborhood,” said Ferber. “A father and son died in the fire, and to make matters worse, the mother in this family had died in a car accident a few years earlier.”

Two brothers survived, and went to live with relatives.

Ferber never knew the family but she wondered how the boys coped with so much tragedy, which inspired “Julia’s Kitchen.”

Ferber said she was delighted when one of the boys who survived the fire contacted her and became her friend on Facebook.

“He is a sophomore at Boston University,” said Ferber. “He has all the resilience that I gave to my character, Cara in “Julia’s Kitchen.”

 Ferber told students she wanted to be a writer after falling in love with Judy Blume’s books in elementary school.

“Her books touched my heart and soul, and I dreamed of someday being able to do the same,” said Ferber, who prefers to write novels for children in grades 4-8.

“I love that growing up, in-between time,” she said.

Fifth-grader Andrea Cassidy said she enjoyed getting to hear and see a real author during Tuesday’s event.

“We got to know her,” said Cassidy. “She was very nice and smart.”

Tanner Gerard, another fifth-grader, said he learned being an author requires a lot of revising. Ferber is a newer author and Gerard hasn’t read any of her books yet, but now he wants to check some out of the school library.

“I might want to be an author someday,” he said.

Ferber will wrap up her visit to the District today.

Details

Online

Learn more about author Brenda Ferber at her Web site at www.brendaferber.com

To donate

An account for donations has been set up for the Hepker family.  Money can be donated at any Central State Bank location. Make checks payable to the Hepker family.