Father and Daughter Share Art, Humor, and Authorship

By Chuck Keller

Jerry Noran’s quirky sense of humor is reflected in the title of his first book, A is for Edelweiss, a humorous view of the oddities of the English language. 

Jerry was in the practice of noodling little verses or palindromes on his work desk calendar.  “You know, I’d just be on the phone and I’d be, you know, just writing a little poem or something on my notepad.” Then he laughs and says, “I had to keep all those desk calendars just because there’s such good stuff on them.” But after reviewing them, he had a thought. “I thought, you know, you could probably make an alphabet, or an abecedarium or a book to teach the alphabet like ‘A if for apple’” except reflected his absurd musings.

A traditional abecedarium would feature a letter, an illustration, rhymes, or words to help the reader learn letters and sounds. But English is a pretty crazy language with its silent letters and peculiar spellings that we borrow from other languages and that puzzled Jerry. If there’s an exception to a rule, he will find it and exploit it for fun. And thus the absurd abecedarium began. 

Jerry created humorous albeit fake endorsements for their book. They share a love of the Star Wars movies so Jerry created one blurb that reads, “A worthy prequel to A is for Edelweiss II” by one Fanta Jimenez (Phantom Menace). That humor permeates the book. For instance, the first page, the A of A if for Edelweiss is a nod to The Sound of Music. It’s fun.  

He said, “We have lots of words that seem to start with a particular letter but the pronunciation is different like ‘pneumonia.’ It begins with a p but the initial sound is an n. And that sounds like fun, right?” And it is fun. 

Neither is quite sure who had the initial idea for the book. Jerry said, “I did this writing part and Jenny was looking for something to do. I mean, it was really Jenny’s idea because I never would have done something. I write simple things. Then I put them in a drawer and never look at them again until, you know, Jenny got a hold of it.” 

 But, still whose idea was it? Jennifer said, “Great question. I honestly can’t remember. I have always loved the idea of collaborating with my Dad on a project, so when he sent me some of his writing, I was excited about the prospect of working together.”

Jennifer studied art at Highlands with Cyndy Noran (her step-mother) and Kathy Skop.  This encouraged her to pursue her studies further and  she graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She worked “a hodge-podge of eclectic jobs where I learned the skills which enabled me to have the amazing job that I work at now,” she says. 

“I have worked with the Legislative Research Commission for over 24 years now….I am part of the graphic design team who are responsible for many of the behind-the-scenes projects like posters, publication art, office related promotional projects and presentation materials. I even had the honor of redesigning our LRC Seal in 2018!”

She says of her dad’s writing, “I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I have read over this book! Looking over Dad’s words I would try to figure out the best way to represent them visually. So many ideas came to mind. I eventually decided that since I felt his words were an art form themselves, what better way to display their meanings by adding the alphabet to well-known, and some not as well known, art.” And it works so very well. 

Jenn said that “It took more than a year to get copyright approvals and do research on each of the pieces. This was very important to me as I wanted to respect the art that I was paying homage to in the book and would never want to just steal someone else’s intellectual property.” But not everyone was receptive so she had to find another path. 

The illustrations are a nod to old-school readers as well as to major art pieces and even pop art references. Jen said, “I also wanted to try to have a wide variety of images that ranged throughout time and subject matter, so the research alone to find the perfect pieces was very time consuming…. If I had to describe my art for this project, I would have to use the word “eclectic.” I wanted pieces and stills that represented Dad’s words and my visions. Two other words I would use to describe the art are ‘labor intensive.’” 

She said, “Since Dad wrote the book, I thought it only fair that he had a say in the final art. He was the main person I went to when I was working on pieces to get his opinion on how they were progressing. Dad would offer insights or encouragement which was very helpful to me. Since Dad and I both love art, I do feel like it brought us closer together. It was fun to talk shop and collaborate through phone, text, email and in person.”

Will there be another book? Jerry still has drawers of musings and Jennifer says that she carries “around a nerdy-awesome clipboard storage box that holds pens, highlighters and paper for musings, sketches, and ideas. There are so many things I want to do.”

They hope to have a book release in Fort Thomas. Jennifer said, “My publisher, Dragonfly Press Publishing, has reached out to several bookstores including The Blue Marble in Fort Thomas, to schedule signings.”

The current schedule can be found on their website under Events at: https://dflypress.com/events. As of this printing, you can order the book on Amazon.