Native author holds event to celebrate a children's story about geese at Windham's Gambo Dam - By Elizabeth Richards

Barbie DelCamp has spent over 1,000 hours taking photographs at the Gambo Dam in Windham. After documenting the story of Canadian geese arriving, laying their eggs, and hatching goslings on the river, she has written and illustrated a children’s book titled The Gambo Way. On Saturday, November 7^th, she introduced herself and her book at a press release coffee held at Starbucks in Portland. 
 

In front of a small group, DelCamp shared the story of how her venture began. When her mother was living with Alzheimer’s disease, DelCamp picked up a camera as a way to distract herself from her mother’s illness.  After her mother passed, she wrote her first book, called When It’s All Said and Done. The book, she said, is distinctly Christian, and is a composition of living with Alzheimer’s, the mother-daughter relationship, and the things that were going on in her life. 

“It was something that I needed to do just to process,” she said. 

She started a small publishing company named for her mother, Sweet Georgie Ann’s Publishing. The second book she published was her first children’s book, Four Parkway, about the Osprey on the Fore River Parkway. It was her first attempt at a children’s book, she said, but she wasn’t quite ready to introduce herself. 

With her second children’s book, The Gambo Way, she was ready to take that leap. She invited the press along with friends and family to the event to share her journey and promote her books. This story of the geese came about by accident, she said. She first ventured to the Gambo Dam to find the eagles that a friend had said were there. 

“What I found instead was a whole other delight, and that was the geese,” she said. “I’ve been totally and completely enamored with the geese.”  

Two other books in progress were also previewed at the event. Evergreen is the story of geese at Evergreen Cemetery in Portland. Teeny Tiny Beach Plovers documents the hatching of two plover nests on Prout’s Neck. 

The Gambo Way is now available on www.Amazon.com, www.BarnesandNoble.com, and the author’s website at www.sweetgeorgieannsbooksandwhatnot.com.