Quarantine in South Lake Tahoe leads to poem brought to life in new children's book

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - In search of something positive to do while staying at home during the pandemic, South Lake Tahoe parent Gantt Miller and his daughter Mackenzie started brainstorming. They couldn't sew, so making masks were out of the question. What could they do?

They could tell a story.

The nine-year-old Mackenzie and her dad, who wrote the book under a pen name, M.C. Behm, started to explore what messages they could convey between the front and back covers.

Once Upon a Quarantine was created and includes a monster and superheroes to battle it. The book was just released October 27, 2020 and illustrations were done by Swapan Debnath from Calcutta, a veteran of over 200 children's books.

Lines from the illustrated poem that tackles the pandemic in an entertaining way that both children and adults will appreciate:

"The monster even stole toilet paper and closed our favorite stores."

“Hooray for science!” our kids all say. “Hooray for medicine! And hooray for all who battled so we could play again.”

The members of the Boys and Girls Club of Lake Tahoe (BGCLT) were treated to a reading of the book by Gantt on Thursday. His wife, South Tahoe High teacher Jayme Miller, joined him for the presentation, dressed as the coronavirus.

The club has copies of the book to sell with proceeds being donated back to them. Both of the Miller's children attend BGCLT.

"They did battle face-to-face, doctors, nurses, EMTs. They flattened that scary virus and brought the monster to its knees."

Miller said copies are also on sale at both Raley's in South Lake Tahoe as well as availability on Amazon and other online retailers though some may currently be out of stock as they await new shipments.

His penname, M.C. Behm, was his grandmother's name and the one he used on his other book, The Elixir of Yosemite, a murder mystery.

Before moving to South Lake Tahoe in 2005, Gantt was a public school history teacher in the Philadelphia area where he received a Master’s in Education from the University of Pennsylvania. When he and Jayme moved west he left teaching and is in the window manufacturing business. He writes the Tahoe Dad column for the Mountain News.