A successful children’s author who was raised in Henderson is about to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame along with her longtime collaborator.
Debbie Dadey will go into the Lexington-based Hall of Fame with collaborator Marcia Thornton Jones, with whom she began writing in the late 1980s.
“It’s very nice to be included,” Dadey said in a telephone interview with the Hendersonian.
Born Debbie Gibson in Morganfield in 1959, she moved with her family to Henderson when she was 5. “My older brother, Frank, was getting ready to start school, and Mom and Dad wanted us to be (in Henderson) to go to school,” Dadey said. “Plus, my father was working at Whirlpool (in Evansville), so it would be closer.”
She grew up on Old Madisonville Road, attending the former Weaverton Elementary School and graduating from Henderson County High School in 1977.
She has “pretty good memories” of growing up here, participating in the Boat and Ski Club’s annual ski show and playing backyard baseball.
She spent a year at Henderson Community College, then earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Western Kentucky University, followed by a master’s degree in library science. “I loved to read anyway,” she said.
With no teaching jobs open in Henderson, she eventually became a librarian at the private Sayre School in Lexington, where “Marcia was my running partner.”
“We had 20 minutes or so each day to eat lunch,” Dadey recalled. “One day we were just chatting about books and writing; we both always wanted to write a children’s book. Marcia said, ‘Let’s do it! Tomorrow at lunch period, we’ll start writing.’
“We did it every day for a year and a half at the teachers’ table, writing on pieces of paper, taking them home, typing them up and bringing it back (to school). Sometimes we’d sit in the computer lab (where Jones taught) and say a story out loud, with Marcia usually the one typing it.
“We sent off several stories” that got rejected by publishers, Dadey said. “The first thing we sold was a greeting card. It said, ‘Two words of advice now that you’re a working mother.’ You opened it up and it said, ‘Fast food.’ We got $150.” It was a start.
“One day at school—you know how kids can goof off sometimes—I went to Marcia’s classroom and she said, ‘These kids are driving me crazy! I can’t take it anymore! I think I’d have to be a monster’” to get them in line.
To cheer up her friend, Dadey proposed writing a book about a teacher who could indeed turn into a 10-foot-tall monster.
“We had a lot of fun,” she said. “…We wrote it in two weeks.”
That project became “Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots,” about a class of third graders who misbehave so badly that they run off all their teachers. But then Mrs. Jeepers shows up at Bailey Elementary School. She’s a teacher who has moved from Transylvania, moved into a creepy old house with a long box that resembles a coffin and wears a mysterious green brooch with seemingly magic powers.
On the first day in the class, she lays down the class rules on behavior. Eddie, the class troublemaker, asks what would happen if anyone got out of line. “I hope you never have to find out,” Mrs. Jeepers says ominously. The children begin to wonder whether she is, in fact, a vampire.
They sent the manuscript to three publishers. Then they heard back from Scholastic, one of the largest publishers for young people.
“They called and said they really liked it, except the ending. They thought the story was too scary,” Dadey said. “In the original, Mrs. Jeepers actually turned into a vampire.”
With the prospect of finally getting published, “We decided there was more than one way to write,” and they toned down the ending.
“Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots” was published in 1990.
“It sold 250,000 copies in the first month it was out,” Dadey said.
“It was one of my favorite books to read when I was a little girl,” Danielle Anguish, children services manager for the Henderson County Public Library, said.
“We were lucky,” Dadey said. “I had a friend that took her 12 years to get her first story sold. We had been writing a year and a half when we sold ‘Vampires.’”
Their next project was “Werewolves Don’t Go to Summer Camp.”
“They rejected it,” Dadey said. “We rewrote it and they rejected it. I was ready to cry. We rewrote it, and they bought it.”
More books followed, eventually becoming The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids series.
“Neither one of us—speaking for myself—knew what we were doing,” Dadey said. “We were just figuring it out along the way. It was an adventure.”
In 1992, Dadey’s husband completed his doctorate and got a job as a medical scientist in Texas. Dadey and Jones managed to continue their collaboration by sending chapters back and forth by fax machine, before email made instantly sharing documents possible.
Over the decades, Dadey and Jones wrote about 100 books together. Dadey has also written scores of books by herself, including the Mermaid Tales series and some nonfiction books for children. In all, she said she has had 182 books published, selling about 47 million copies. But receiving just pennies per book—often split with her collaborator—it didn’t make her fabulously wealthy.
But it is getting Dadey and Jones into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, where nominees are selected by committees at Lexington’s Carnegie Center and the Kentucky Arts Council. The induction ceremony will take place March 30 at Lexington’s Kentucky Theatre.
Once in the hall, Dadey—who now lives in New Hampshire with her husband—will join another former Hendersonian: Lucy Furman, whose acclaimed 1896 book “Stories of a Sanctified Town” consisted of fictionalized accounts of life in Robards. More than 125 years later, it remains in print.
HCPL’s Anguish expressed happiness that Dadey is going into the Hall of Fame. “I’ve met her twice,” she said—once when Dadey paid a visit back home when Anguish was in second or third grade, then years later at the library “when we had a Mermaid party.”
“She’s very nice,” Anguish said. “I love her books. She’s just a really neat human.
“It’s even better because she’s from here,” she said. “It shows kids they can do it—they can be a writer or an illustrator.”
Another possible milestone lingers for Dadey and Jones and their Bailey School Kids. “We’re waiting to see if there will be a live-action movie,” Dadey said.
