Longtime Federal Way residents might recognize author Teresa Bateman from her time as a school librarian for FWPS for 30 years. She was first full time at Brigadoon Elementary, then split her time between that school and Olympic View Elementary when school librarian budgets were cut.
Not only has she shared her love for books through that role, but has also started publishing books of her own. Bateman has published 29 books, beginning with her first book in 1997.
While her love of words had helped her become an author, she said she is a firm believer that “every person has at least one good book inside of them … the only difference between an author and a non-author is that the author actually sits down and puts the words on paper.”
Bateman’s published works are illustrated children’s books and short stories in children’s magazines, but she also writes poetry, full-length books and more. The books have a variety of subjects and often feature animals learning a lesson. She has published several holiday themed books, others drawing from Irish folktales, and a few sharing historical or religious information.
Bateman tries to write every day. Sometimes that is a journal entry, sometimes a book review, a poem or a draft of a new book. Her published books represent just a fraction of the “hundreds of manuscripts that have never been accepted anywhere.” These include a full length chapter book that she wrote during the pandemic. She doesn’t find this disheartening and said she remembers the words of a writing workshop where the author who was speaking said “the only thing you ever really waste is paper.”
For Bateman, this means that writing is “like playing the piano, the more you do it, the better you get at it. So I don’t consider it a waste. … I still had a good time writing them.”
Writing every day has been a bit of a challenge recently because she had been caring for her elderly parents, both of whom have now passed away. A love of words is something they always shared. Bateman and her 9 siblings are “all avid readers and love words.”
“When someone in our family uses a word in a particularly good way, we will actually stop and applaud and say ‘good usage,’” Bateman said. “We like those big heavy duty words, and we know what they mean.”
While going through some boxes, she recently found poems that she had written for her mother four decades ago. She is thinking about turning one of these poems for her mother into a manuscript for a picture book.
As a school librarian, Bateman said she loved introducing kids to books who didn’t at first share her and her family’s excitement about reading. In addition to wanting to share the magic of learning, she also said “studies have shown that kids who read do better in all subject areas.”
The first step is to recommend just the right book for that individual kid, Bateman said.
“A book never went on my library shelves until I had read it personally. I read every single book in that library, in both of those libraries,” she said. “I always felt like, how can I recommend a book to a kid if I haven’t actually read the book?”
She said her trick with kids who did not see themselves as readers was to meet them where they were at.
“I was recommending ‘Captain Underpants’ to those kids who were reluctant readers,” she said as one example. “Once they got into the habit of reading and they understood how much fun reading was, then they were willing to try new things, but you had to catch them first.”
She said the highest compliment for her came when she ran into a former student who she said recognized her: “She said, you always knew the book I would need.”
Bateman also encourages people to read books that they might not think are their taste because she learns something from every book she reads.
“Even though I’m a retired librarian now, I review hundreds of books every year. And I am reading books I do not want to read. I just finished reading a ‘He Man’ book, for example, because I read the books no one else wants to review.”
Although she might not enjoy every book equally, she said “I’m finding out things by reading books that I wouldn’t choose. I’m learning things that I did not know before.”
Bateman describes the joy of collecting this new knowledge by saying “every single piece of information you have, you have this mental library, and you’re shelving all these pieces of information and organizing them, and it expands your mind.”
She also finds books and stories to be a great way to teach information. One book about privacy, safety and digital literacy for kids started because the required topic was “boring” to teach. Bateman said a first grade student even said so during a lesson and asked if she had a book to read about the topic instead.
“I literally reached my hand up, pulled it down from the ceiling in a fist, and I said to them, ‘once there was a little lamb named Mitzi…’ And I made the whole thing up on the spot,” Bateman said. She said she used that same story for years and finally turned it into a picture book called “Mitzi and the Big Bad Nosy Wolf: A Digital Citizenship Story.”
When Bateman isn’t writing, reading or finding old poems, she volunteers two mornings a week at the Federal Way Senior Center Food Bank — which she was sure to encourage people to support with food donations.
Here is a poem that Bateman wrote about the joy of reading:
An open book,
a chair’s embrace,
and I am in another place.
I never have to leave the room
to excavate a mummy’s tomb
or wander red-rocked hills of Mars
or ride a spaceship to the stars.
Worlds in words for me to find.
An open book,
an open mind.
At her writing desk in her office at home, author Teresa Bateman shares the story behind her picture book titled “Bully Blockers Club.” She said the book wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for a school counselor who was adamant that she should write about the topic. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / The Mirror
Teresa Bateman’s books have been translated into several languages by her publisher, including this copy of “Fiona’s Luck” that has been translated into Korean. Behind the book are two shelves of books she has published that make up one side of her writing desk. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang for the Mirror.
In author Teresa Bateman’s living room, a large print of an illustration from one of her children’s books fills the wall. The print was a gift from one of her brothers. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang for the Mirror.
