Betty MacDonald Fan Club Newsletter

Hello this is Martine,

I hope you all had a very nice Christmas.

We are working on the Betty MacDonald Fan Club Newsletter.

More Info will come soon.

Happy New Year!

Martine



Linde Lund created the Betty MacDonald, Monica Sone and Wolfgang Hampel Blogs
http://www.blogger.com/profile/15388942569315864610

Betty MacDonald Fan Club Items
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/06/betty-macdonald-fan-club-items-comments.html
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/07/betty-macdonald-fan-club-items.html
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/07/betty-macdonald-interviews-on-cddvd_17.html

Betty MacDonald Community
http://bettymacdonaldcommunity.blogspot.com/

You can find more info about our Betty MacDonald projects and events in the future.

Wolfgang Hampel, author of the Betty MacDonald Biography and winner of the first Betty MacDonald Memorial Award founded Betty MacDonald Fan Club and Society in 1983. We are the largest Betty MacDonald Fan Club in the world - with members in 23 countries. Join our wonderful international Betty MacDonald Community!
We have tons of fun!

Betty MacDonald - Fan Club of Betty MacDonald and Society of Betty MacDonald
http://bettymacdonald.blogspot.com/

Betty MacDonald Fan Club
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/

Betty MacDonald Forum
http://bettymacdonaldforum.blogspot.com/

Betty MacDonald Society
http://bettymacdonaldsociety.blogspot.com/

Mary Bard Society
http://marybardsociety.blogspot.com/

Nancy and Plum Fan Club
http://nancyandplumfanclub.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Fan Club
http://pigglewigglefanclub.blogspot.com/

Monica Sone
http://monicasone.blogspot.com/

Monica Sone Society
http://monicasonesociety.blogspot.com/

Monica Sone Fan Club
http://monicasonefanclub.blogspot.com/

Wolfgang Hampel Founder of Betty MacDonald Fan Club and Betty MacDonald Society
http://wolfganghampel.blogspot.com/

New Interviews with Betty MacDonald's family and friends

So many Betty MacDonald Fans around the world adore the interview with Betty MacDonald's brilliant sister Alison Bard.

Many more new audio interviews with Betty MacDonald's family and friends will be published in 2010 on CD and DVD. You'll learn much more about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.

There will be a fascinating DVD. You can visit with members of Betty MacDonald's family all the places where Betty MacDonald and her family lived.

Linde Lund creates the Betty MacDonald, Monica Sone and Wolfgang Hampel Blogs
http://www.blogger.com/profile/15388942569315864610

Betty MacDonald Fan Club Items
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/06/betty-macdonald-fan-club-items-comments.html
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/07/betty-macdonald-fan-club-items.html
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/07/betty-macdonald-interviews-on-cddvd_17.html

Wolfgang Hampel Founder of Betty MacDonald Fan Club and Betty MacDonald Society
http://wolfganghampel.blogspot.com/

New Betty MacDonald Biography and Documentary

Wolfgang Hampel, journalist and author of the Betty MacDonald Biography, had the opportunity to interview bestselling author David Guterson, who wrote 'Snow falling on Cedars'.
A fascinating new Betty MacDonald Biography and Documentary will be available on CD and DVD in 2010.
Wolfgang Hampel visited all the places and interviewed Betty MacDonald's family and friends.

Wolfgang Hampel Founder of Betty MacDonald Fan Club and Betty MacDonald Society
http://wolfganghampel.blogspot.com/

http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/06/betty-macdonald-fan-club-items-comments.html
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/07/betty-macdonald-fan-club-items.html
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/07/betty-macdonald-interviews-on-cddvd_17.html

A fondness for reading - Mrs. Piggle - Wiggle

Robin's latest Read Aloud in her second grade classroom was Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, by Betty MacDonald. The second graders loved this book!

http://fondnessforreading.blogspot.com/2009/03/mrs-piggle-wiggle.html

Don't miss Wolfgang Hampel's wonderful interview with Betty MacDonald sister Alison Bard, please. Wolfgang Hampel is the author of e book The Kettles' Million Dollar Egg and other books and stories about life and work of Betty MacDonald.
You can find many more info about Betty MacDonald and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle in his story entitled Betty MacDonald's illness.

Interview, books and stories have been published by Betty MacDonald Fan Club in 2009.
The interview with Betty MacDonald's sister Alison Bard has been published on CD/DVD in 2009.

Alison Bard tells many delightful stories about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.

Betty MacDonald Fan Club Items

http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/2009/07/betty-macdonald-fan-club-items.html

Betty MacDonald, Monica Sone, Wolfgang Hampel Links

Linde Lund created the Betty MacDonald, Monica Sone and Wolfgang Hampel Blogs
http://www.blogger.com/profile/15388942569315864610
Betty MacDonald - Fan Club of Betty MacDonald and Society of Betty MacDonald
http://bettymacdonald.blogspot.com/
Betty MacDonald Fan Club
http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/
Betty MacDonald Forum
http://bettymacdonaldforum.blogspot.com/
Betty MacDonald Society
http://bettymacdonaldsociety.blogspot.com/
Mary Bard Society
http://marybardsociety.blogspot.com/
Nancy and Plum Fan Club
http://nancyandplumfanclub.blogspot.com/
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Fan Club
http://pigglewigglefanclub.blogspot.com/
Monica Sone
http://monicasone.blogspot.com/
Monica Sone Society
http://monicasonesociety.blogspot.com/
Monica Sone Fan Club
http://monicasonefanclub.blogspot.com/
Wolfgang Hampel Founder of Betty MacDonald Fan Club and Betty MacDonald Society
http://wolfganghampel.blogspot.com/

Betty MacDonald Interviews on CD/DVD

The mentioned interviews with Betty MacDonald, her family and friends in this article are real treasures and especially Betty's sister Alison is so funny and brilliant. These interviews are available on CD and DVD. You can read other comments of fans regarding the stories and interviews in my next blog. ( see Betty MacDonald Fan Club Page ) http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/

`THE EGG' AND BETTY AUTHOR'S LEGEND LIVES ON
By CECELIA GOODNOW Seattle P.I. ReporterNearly 40 years after her untimely death, the Seattle area's first million-selling author has largely faded from the annals of literature. But in Germany, Betty MacDonald just keeps going ... and going ... and going. Which has filmmaker Wolfgang Hampel coming and going as he scurries to gather local color for a television documentary about the internationally renowned author of ``The Egg and I." Never mind that some of MacDonald's humor books are out of print in the United States. In Germany, her fame lives on - a fact that becomes clear after just a few minutes with the ebullient Wolfgang Hampel. ``I think she is popular in Germany and Europe because she had a very hard life, but she could also smile, and she had for every situation a laugh," he said. ``Our life is tragicomedy, and she showed this. It's a masterpiece, her books. Therefore, she's unforgotten." Betty MacDonald, an incandescent woman with bobbed hair and a sweeping smile, developed a huge following in the 1940s and '50s with her comic tales of everyday life in the Northwest. ``The Egg and I," her first million-seller, was a bleakly humorous account of chicken farming near Chimacum on the Olympic Peninsula. She moved there in the late 1920s with her first husband, Robert Heskett. A film version starred Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert and led to a series of Ma and Pa Kettle movies. MacDonald wrote other popular books, including ``Onions in the Stew," which described her years on Vashon Island, and ``The Plague and I," an upbeat account of her battle with tuberculosis at age 30. Her children's novels include ``Nancy and Plum" and the ``Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" series, which inspired a popular Seattle Children's Theatre production that has been staged three times since 1989. Wolfgang Hampel, who teaches career-development classes in Heidelberg, is part of a five-man group that has been researching Betty MacDonald since 1983, first as fans and now as free-lance filmmakers in a nation still hungry for news of the faded American legend. Although they have done projects on author Truman Capote and illustrator Maurice Sendak, it seems ``Betty" is their first love. On a three-week visit to Seattle, Wolfgang Hampel gathered enough material for a spate of documentaries.Betty MacDonald, who died of cancer in 1958 at age 49, won rousing reviews in her day. When ``The Egg and I" appeared in 1945, the Philadelphia Inquirer called it ``the most hilarious, earthy, rib-splitting piece of fowl-lettres to be hatched since chickens were invented." The Atlantic Monthly said MacDonald wrote ``with a breezy Western unconventionality," and The Saturday Review raved about her ``hilarious reminiscences" of anunconventional life in the ``Northwest Pacific. HarperCollins republished ``The Egg and I" in 1987, and the ``Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" series is still available in HarperTrophy paperback, but some other MacDonald titles are more elusive. Buccaneer Books, a company in Cutchogue, N.Y., that specializes in republishing out-of-print classics, issued four of her titles in hardback, but none is in stock. The Seattle Public Library has most of her titles. ``She's still very much read," said librarian Michael Moffitt. ``We have questions all the time from people who want to locate the site of the farm or track down Ma and Pa Kettle. People come from the East Coast practically on pilgrimages. They want to experience Betty MacDonald first-hand." Betty MacDonald's sassy personality and colorful life are part of the draw. Born Anne Elizabeth Campbell Bard, she moved to Seattle as a child, graduated from Roosevelt High School and married Heskett in 1927, at age 19. They separated after four years and later divorced. After the marriage ended, MacDonald became the only woman labor inspector with the Depression-era National Recovery Administration and later worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. She was sidelined with tuberculosis for more than eight months at Firland Sanitorium north of Seattle before resuming her career in 1939 as publicity supervisor for the National Youth Adminstration.In 1942, Betty married Donald MacDonald, started writing and quickly became a celebrity. On his Seattle visit Wolfgang Hampel gathered anecdotes from relatives and friends, Wolfgang Hampel treasures such recollections. ``Everyone said to me, `She was the most wonderful person in the world I've ever met.'

Welcome to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Fan Club

Betty MacDonald's unique Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has so many fans from all over the world.
For more info please visit Betty MacDonald Fan Club page. http://bettymacdonaldfanclub.blogspot.com/

More info will come!