By Tom Paulu

June 22, 2006 - Mount St. Helens has inspired plenty of guidebooks along with treatises about geology.

Now there's a volcano book featuring Hibble Gibbles.

The friendly, hairy creatures with 24-inch-long feet sprang from the imagination of Fran Curtin Gieseke, a local native who lives in Tacoma.

Gieseke's children's book "Mt. St. Helens and the Secret of the Bar-Roo Forest" concerns the Hibble Gibbles' struggles against the Giant Termites, set in the days leading up to the 1980 eruption.

Gieseke sees a niche for a children's book with a volcano theme. "There wasn't anything for kids and kids are fascinated by volcanoes," she said.

The book's target audience is third- and fourth-graders.

Gieseke spent much of her youth living on a Wahkiakum County farm and attended Mark Morris High School, though she got married and moved away after her junior year. She and her husband, Roger, used to camp at Spirit Lake, and nearby Fawn Lake is a prominent location in the Bar-Roo Forest.

When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, Gieseke was living in Castle Rock.

"I had these little creatures in my head for quite a while," she said. "I needed a place for them."

The mountain's eruption settled that.

She wrote the first draft of "Bar-Roo Forest" in 1981, though she's honed it during writing courses since. The characters are "probably a mishmash of people I've met through the years," she said, "including Sourgum, the evil one."

Working for banks and raising two children occupied Gieseke for much of the past 25 years.

Changes in self-publishing encouraged her. It became cheaper to self-publish, she said, and now such books are available through bookstores.

In 2002, Gieseke had pulmonary embolism. "I almost died," she said. "I have two beautiful daughters and a wonderful husband." The one thing she didn't have, she realized, was a finished copy of her long-simmering book.

She finally got the story printed 18 months ago. Now that she has quit a bank job in Lakewood, Wash., she has time to promote "The Bar-Roo Forest."

It is the first of a planned three-part trilogy. The second is set during the blast and the final installment will focus on the aftermath. Gieseke also is working on a book about growing up on the farm outside Cathlamet. "We were a whole world away from the rest of the world," she said.

The book can be purchased for $15.25 through Gieseke's Web site, http://www.hibgib.com.


Read the article at The Longview Daily News website.