Additional information
by Linda Carnegie (Illustrator), Shirley W. Mayhew (Author)
This story is fiction based on an event that really happened. In August of 1963 a real circus came to Martha's Vineyard and gave two performances at Waban Park in the town of Oak Bluffs. A traveling circus usually traveled from town to town in a train or in trucks - this was the first circus ever to transport its animals, people, and supplies across a body of water to an island seven miles off the coast of Massachusetts. Ferry boats make daily trips to Martha's Vineyard bringing supplies to the island as well as people and cars and trucks, an occasional pet dog, or two or three riding horses in a horse van. But never had they carried lions and tigers and elephants - or the entire makings of a circus. After about a year of planning, it took two of the ferry boats six round trips in the middle of the night to transport the entire circus to the Vineyard. It was an exciting affair and attracted about 6,000 people, some from Cape Cod and Nantucket. The Mills Brothers Circus gave two performances on August 5, 1963 in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, and came back to the Vineyard in 1965 to perform in Edgartown.
Author Biography
Shirley W. Mayhew, Author: I arrived on Martha's Vineyard in 1947 as a 21 year old bride, after studying at Brown University for three years. I married an Islander, and my husband John and I built a home and raised a son and two daughters in West Tisbury. A photographer since childhood, I recorded the life of my children - and later my three granddaughters - as they grew up. While my own children were still young, I worked as a freelance photographer, specializing in portraits of children. Married in an era of "stay at home Moms", I finally finished college at the age of thirty-eight, got my first full-time job at the age of forty, and for twenty years taught Language Arts to grades 6, 7, and 8 at the Edgartown School. After my children were grown, I turned to painting in water colors, traveling the world, and finally, to writing. Islander is the third book I have published. In 1973 I published Seasons of a Vineyard Pond, a one year journal of the wildlife in and around Look's Pond in West Tisbury, which I wrote as a Bachelor's degree thesis and illustrated myself; in 2014 I gathered about forty of my essays with accompanying photographs, and self-published them under the title Looking Back: My Long Life on Martha's Vineyard. Now, at 90 and after thirty years of retirement, I am still writing, but no longer photographing, painting, traveling - or riding my bike. Linda Carnegie, Illustrator: I washed ashore on the Vineyard in 1974 and have been painting ever since. Clients have included Mass General Hospital for Children in Boston, MA, Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, OH, and the wonderful West Tisbury Library here on the Vineyard. This book is dedicated to my new friend Shirley and all my dear friends and family who help me stumble through this life adventure. And to my heart, my son Jonah who is my sun.
