In the run-up to the local festivities (which happen in August – stay tuned) that celebrate Lillian Nordica, Farmington’s home-grown-but-world-famous opera diva, I’m delighted to announce that a brand-new book about the great singer has just been published by two local authors.

Lily of the North is a children’s history of Madame Nordica, aimed at grades 3 to 6, and penned, aptly enough, by two of our elementary-level teachers. Authors Patricia Flint and Jane Parker have both recently retired after careers at Cascade Brook School, where Patricia was the librarian and also taught English, and Jane taught music, both vocal and instrumental. Integral to the book are the enchanting water-color illustrations by Luanne Wrenn, an art teacher in the Belgrade shools, which are interspersed with photographs of Mme Nordica’s career from the collection of the Nordica Memorial Association.

It’s the Association that will be hosting a celebration of the book’s release on June 24 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Nordica Homestead Museum on the Holley Road. The authors and the illustrator will all be present, and will be happy to sign copies of the book for those who already have a copy or wish to purchase one there. There will be refreshments served, tours of the museum available, and a book reading for all ages; children are encouraged to attend!

If you’ve never been there, it’s easy to find: just turn up Holley Road off Route 4 in Fairbanks, and it’s a straight shot, less than half a mile, to the handsome sign that marks the museum’s driveway.

When Jane and Trish taught together at Cascade Brook they often had front hall duty together, and in between the usual noisy student commotions they would talk about someday writing a book together. After they retired they started meeting at a local bakery to discuss the project. Jane started with an outline of Mme Nordica’s life, which she illustrated with stick figures, and then turned it over to Trish, who transposed it into language for children.

Jane lives right across the road from the Nordica Homestead, and has both a professional and personal interest in Mme Nordica’s career, being an operatic soprano herself and having portrayed her famous neighbor on many occasions. Jane developed a one-woman show about Mme Nordica which she played, in costume, in schools around the area and at Portland’s Victoria Mansion. Allen Flint, one of the book’s dedicatees, awarded her the title of “Divine Jane” because of her portrayal. (I’m rather proud of the fact that the last time Jane played Mme Nordica was in a musical play I wrote and directed for Foothills Arts about 14 years ago.)

Lily of the North is available at Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers and at The Calico Patch, both on Broadway in Farmington, and also at the Nordica Homestead Museum. I’m thrilled that my old friend Jane, along with her old friends Trish and Luanne, have joined forces to produce a charming, entertaining, and handsome book that will bring the story of Farmington’s native diva to a younger audience. Their work is a splendid young-adult introduction to an actual local phenomenon, and opens her story up to a new audience.

While some Farmington residents may think of Lillian Nordica as an old-fashioned singer that nobody cares about any more, I’m happy to tell you that opera fans around the world still utter her name in awe, along with Johanna Gadski and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. Opera goers have long memories, and they worship legends.

IN OTHER NEWS: It’s very satisfying to see the Emery Center hosting a big event for a poet. UMF invites the public to join them in celebrating Maine Poet Laureate Wesley McNair’s recent winning of the 2015 PEN New England Award for Poetry. A reception and reading will be held at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 19, at the Emery Community Arts Center on the UMF campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The festivity, “Blood and Memory–A Celebration of Maine Poet Laureate Wesley McNair and the PEN New England Award,” will include an opening reception to be followed by readings of McNair’s work featuring UMF faculty members Kristen Case, Shana Youngdahl, Daniel Gunn, Jeffrey Thomson, Professor Emeritus McNair and a solo piano piece by Phil Carlsen.

“All of UMF congratulates Wes on this very prestigious honor,” said Jeffrey Thomson, UMF professor of creative writing. “This PEN New England Award for “The Lost Child,” continues to prove that Wes is not only a poet of New England but a voice for the country, and indeed the world. In this book-length poem of blood and history, he writes not only of a people—us—at the end of hope, but ultimately of the stories that sustain us.”

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