If you didn’t know, Betty Cetas is my mother, so today I thought I would share the story behind her first picture book, Oscar and the Awful, Horrible Smell.
It all started in 1994, when my brother and his wife decided to work in a residential home for mentally disabled children in Finland for a year.
While they were living and working in the home, they met a local 18-year-old girl, named Sari. Before long, Mom received a phone call announcing that Sari was coming with them back to Arizona in the United States.
The plan for Sari to live with Mom and Dad and work for me as a nanny for my kids. My eldest son was 4 and my daughter was 6 months at the time.
My mom’s response was “Okay.”
That was the beginning of our connection to Finland.
Over the years, Mom decided to give Sari a scholarship so she could attend the University of Arizona to obtain her teaching degree and later master’s in special education.
Then in the summer of 1998, my mother decided to fly to Finland with Sari to meet her parents. She wasn’t there long before Dad received a call to send money.
Mom had fallen in love with the virgin woods and crystal-clear lakes and wanted to buy a summer cottage there.
My Dad thought she had lost her mind, but after much grumbling, he wired over the money.
The cottage was a small log cabin with a great room, small kitchen, one bedroom and a loft. It did not have a bathroom or laundry facilities. There was an outhouse and a separate sauna house with an adjourning room positioned halfway from the cottage and the lake.
Fins traditionally take a sweat-inducing sauna and then run down to the lake and jump into the cold water. And they do all of this in their birthday suits!
When mom signed the contract, she stipulated that the previous owner leave all his furnishing and household items, because we would be coming a long way.
The previous owner was horrified, because to sleep in other people’s sheets was considered gross, but as mom pointed out they could be washed in hot water. Well … that leads to the next stipulation.
Mom wanted to add on a bathroom with a stack washer and drier, which she did.
The neighbors chided us for this, since it was unheard of. The surrounding lake houses were rustic hunting and fishing cabins. Who needed a full bathroom?
Of course, by the time mom sold that cabin, most of the other homes in the area had added their own bathrooms!
I was not able to visit the cottage with my family until the summer of 2006. By this time my husband and I had three children, two boys and a girl. My brother also brought his family the same time. He had a daughter and son about the same ages as my younger two.
The boys had to sleep in a tent pitched on the grass near the outhouse.
The days were filled with walks in the woods, boat rides and fishing on the lake, picking blueberries, and many other adventures.
One day, we all noticed a stench emanating from the two younger boys, aged 4 and 5. We quickly discovered that the boys had not changed their socks in days or maybe even weeks!
So, the walk into the woods that day, Mom started telling the five children about a troll who lived in the deep forest named Oscar. He had a long, cooked nose and a very sensitive sense of smell.
Oscar knew all the smells in the forest. He loved the forest and loved picking blueberries best of all.
One day, while Oscar was picking berries, he noticed a stinky smell. It was like no smell he’d ever smelled before.…
And the story was born!
The Fins have many fairytales about trolls who live in the forest, and it is no wonder with so many largely uninhabited forests covering the landscape. The woods were truly magical!
Other stories soon followed, and now we are so pleased to be able to share them with you!
By the way, when we packed up the tent before heading back to the states, we discovered mushrooms growing in the place beneath the place where the boys feet were when they slept!
My eldest son, who was 10 at the time and fastidious about personal hygiene, pointed out that there were no mushrooms growing where his feet were.
I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about the origin story of Troll Tales and Other Stories from Grandma’s Cottage.
“A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipate more dark clouds than any other one thing.” – Laura Ingalls Wilder
You can check out all the books in the Troll Tales and Other Stories from Grandma's Cottage series by clicking the link or the image below.
Take care and keep reading!
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