The Jack Chaps Book Series
With photographs, graphics, and mixed media, this whimsical work features Chicago and its people, including the Green City Market, Lake Michigan, Navy Pier, Chicago firemen, the John Hancock, and Wrigley Field. It also includes a short history of the fire and a Jack Chaps Chicago tour map that encourages visits to various sites.
And, in the end, it’s a story with a twist you simply can’t resist!
Since the book's publication in April 2015, Jack Chaps and I have participated in the 2018 Old Town Art Fair, the 2017/2016 Chicago Printers Row Lit Fest (the largest free outdoor literary event in the Midwest), and performed numerous readings, including at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago (appearing on the Story Time with Dot show, broadcast to the hospital internally), Poppy Arts (in Columbia, MO), Heritage Littles, the Green City Market, Open Books, The Book Cellar, St. James Lutheran School, Belding Elementary School, and we have also appeared at the Cicero Public Library, on La Radiola 26 (a Latin radio station), and in the talent show at Marge's Still pub in Old Town.
The book is currently sold at gift shops in the Navy Pier Children's Museum, John Hancock, and Chicago History Museum, as well as in Heritage Littles, Anderson's Bookshop Naperville, the Book Cellar, Poppy Arts, Women & Children First Bookstore, Hotel Lincoln, and RoscoeBooks. It can also be found at the Family Life Center in Lurie Children's hospital. Additional copies were sold via Kickstarter. St. James Lutheran School incorporated the book into their curriculum on the Great Fire, and I have also collaborated with Chicago firemen in a presentation and reading.
​
In 2013, Jack Chaps, a cute fuzzy 5-pound papillon, was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer and doctors gave him 1 to 4 years to live. He endured 7 months of chemotherapy. Six years later, after overcoming a second bout of cancer, Jack Chaps is alive and well.
He’d like to share his tale with kids who have cancer.