Cake baking and bird song inspired this year’s Inga Kromann Medal winners.  Like so many WSU Pullman students who have competed in the children’s book design contest, the two elementary education majors reached into their own childhoods for stories to tell.

Marissa Miller, a junior from Gig Harbor, dedicated A Cooking Adventure with Grammy Mammy to her two grandmothers, who “taught me that the best foods are made with love.”   She was so excited by the creative process that she plans to keep making books after she’s launched her teaching career.

Molly Ward won the Kromann Medal for best illustration. Her book, Sounds of the Northwest, resulted from her love of the outdoors.  “I’ve always been intrigued with the sounds of nature,” she said, crediting her family for providing help with the project — which, she found, involved lots of planning, hard work, time and patience.  Molly, a junior, grew up in Olympia and now lives in Portland.

Honor medals went to William M. Fitzgerald for his book Randy,  to Cheryl Fredericks for Molly’s Pumpkin, and to Nicole Ragsdale for The Three Little Sheep Can’t Sleep.  Bound copies of their books will be kept in the Brain Education Library.