Carol Fenner (now deceased) was the recipient of the Newbery Honor Award for Yolanda’s Genius [Simon & Schuster, 1995], the ALA Notable Book Honor for Randall’s Wall [Macmillan, 1991] and another ALA Notable Book Honor for the posthumously released Snowed In with Grandmother Silk (Dial Books, 2003). In 1970, The Skates of Uncle Richard was a runner up for the Coretta Scott King Award, a prize that is usually given to African Americans.

Running and Dancing was a life-time work for Ms. Fenner, and the love of her writing career. She researched the story for 20 years. Quite a few of the characters are based upon descendants of the Coffey family (her in-laws, for whom she was 'Aunt Carol'). In particular, the story of Bertine and the Circus is based upon a argument overheard by Aunt Carol in the kitchen of cousin Thelma’s house in New Orleans about whether their son should be allowed to go to the circus and experience all the racism that went with it, or should he be sheltered away from all of that to protect his self-esteem. Grama is very much the vision of grandmother Coffey. Aunt Carol explained the meaning of Running and Dancing to members of the family, and we have fond memories of Aunt Carol singing the mugwort song as we rode horseback on blustery fall days through the Kellogg forest in western Michigan, laughingly exhorting ‘Selene, Selene! Where have you been! (with British pronunciation).

Red Phoenix Books and the Coffey (Williams) family is pleased to bring this manuscript to light. We dedicate it to all her readers – those who will recognize her unique and charming author’s voice. Aunt Carol didn’t quite finish it before she died. Red Phoenix Books cleaned up the typos, and made some small editorial changes that any author would make to the final version of their manuscript.

The original ms for this work, along with many of Carol Fenner’s other original manuscripts can be viewed at the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Collection (part of the Children's Literature Research Project) http://special.lib.umn.edu/clrc/kerlan/index.php.