Millicent and the Wind was 10 years old by the time it got to be a book. I made it up a long time ago in a daycare centre to get the kids to be quiet. The daycare centre was in Coos Bay, Oregon, which is a little logging town very far out in the middle of no place. Around Coos Bay there were kids who lived way out in the woods and didn’t come into town often. I was thinking about them when I made up the story about Millicent and the Wind.
Also Coos Bay was a good town to have a story about wind because the sea wind came in all the time. Mornings in the summer would start off very nice and sunny and it would start to get warm and about 11 o’clock the sea wind would come in and bring the sea fog. It hit like a brick. The temperature went down 20 degrees and it became dark, cloudy and cold. I learned not to like that wind in Coos Bay but in Millicent I have the wind be very friendly. I think that was the kind of wind I wished was there.
