Trumbull Illustrator Makes a Difference

If you are a Trumbull resident, you have probably been to the Trumbull Arts Festival. If you have, chances are you have seen Michele Pace Hofbauer’s work. The artist and children’s book illustrator has been creating and selling her alphabet name pictures at the Trumbull Arts Festival since it began 33 years ago.

What you may not know about, though, are her children’s books. A Trumbull native, Hofbauer presented her most recent book, Couldn’t We Make a Difference?, this month at The Watermark senior living community in Bridgeport.

“I’ve often been accused of being an idealist,” she said, speaking as part of the facility’s monthly Book and Author Series. As a child, she said, she wondered why nations at war with each other did not “just stop.” Now as an adult, she knows better, she said, but a part of her still harbors that hopeful spirit.

That sense of idealism that is unique to children is demonstrated in her book, where the rhyming narrative describes a conversation among children of many races, religions, and ethnicities, in which they discuss how they would fix the world's problems and establish peace.

Hofbauer is also the illustrator of All the Letters (1993), which introduced the illuminated letters she uses in her name signs. Teachers have praised the book as an effective language comprehension teaching tool, she said. The second book she illustrated, The Bug and the Slug in the Rug (1995), was written by comedian Steve Allen, the original host of the Tonight Show.

Couldn’t We Make a Difference?, published in 2000 by Greene Bark Press, is the first book she wrote as well as illustrated. Hofbauer said that writing this book is her life’s proudest accomplishment. Verses from the book have been set to music by renowned singer and Broadway actress Maureen McGovern and performed by the United Nations Children’s Choir at Carnegie Hall.

Hofbauer, a former special education teacher, said the book has been cited by educators and parents for its usefulness in introducing children to the concepts of diversity and tolerance.

“There has to be a way to teach our children to be human beings,” she said, “to teach them how to react to each other.” These days, she said, society is too focused on teaching children technology, an effect of which is that they learn how to use computers, but not how to treat others.

Hofbauer taught at Chalk Hill School in Monroe for eight years, and she said she considers herself a teacher at heart. It is that educator’s sensibility that comes out in her work, especially in Couldn‘t We Make a Difference?.

She said that most people did not expect the special needs children she taught to be able to do much with their lives, and it is this kind of pessimism that she is trying to dispel with her work. The book relays a message to children that she believes and hopes is true: that “everyone can change the world.”

“It’s a valid message for today’s child,” she said, as well as for adults.

When Hofbauer quit teaching to have her first child, she began wholeheartedly pursuing a career in art. She found out she could turn a profit creating her illuminated letter name pictures, which she had begun selling at the arts festival.

Since starting this enterprise, Hofbauer has also worked as an associate publisher at Greene Bark Press in Bridgeport, which published all three books, and now visits local schools to speak about illustrating, writing, and publishing.

Her other work  in the community includes painting a mural in Middlebrook Elementary School’s front hallway and designing the town quilt for the Bridgeport Historical Society.

Hofbauer said that the first customers she connected with at the very first Trumbull Arts Festival are still calling her to this day, even after 33 years. She said she has done thousands of name signs over the years, and plans to do many more. Her next goal, however, is to write another book.

For more information about upcoming events in the Watermark’s Book and Author Series, call 203-374-5611 or visit www.watermarkcommunities.com/3030park. Couldn’t We Make a Difference? is sold on Greene Bark Press’s website at www.greenebarkpress.com/books/diversity_fiction, as well as on the Barnes & Noble website and on Amazon.