Françoise Paradis, Ed.D.

Françoise Paradis' ancestors migrated from Mortagne-au-Perche and Brittany, France to Quebec more than 100 years before the Acadians were deported from Nova Scotia. Her ancestors intersected and blended with Acadians as they migrated from Canada in the 1840s, settling in St. Luce Parish, Frenchville, Maine. Dr. Paradis is the seventh child in a French-speaking family of fourteen children in Frenchville – the heart of French-Canadian and Acadian culture in Maine.

She has served her fellow Franco-Americans, including Acadians, in her work as administrator, instructor, and counselor at the University of Maine and continues to serve them in her private practice as a psychologist. Her research has taken her to Canada and France, and she has written and lectured about Franco-American culture.

She currently lives in Saco, Maine where she works as a psychologist in her private practice, Hidden Springs Psychological Services. She volunteers at the Maine Historical society as a docent for the Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland, Maine.

Her interest in Evangeline, the creation of this book, the Coloring Book, a CD set, and the writing of an accompanying student guide are products of her passion for awakening people to their ancestral gifts and assisting them to integrate these gifts into today's heart and soul. Dr. Paradis can be reached at FEParadis@HiddenSprings.info

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Layne Longfellow, Ph.D.

Layne Longfellow is a member of the Board of Directors, Friends of the Longfellow House, Longfellow National Historic Site, Cambridge, Massachusetts.  His great-great-grandfather, Michael, was Henry W. Longfellow's cousin. 

Dr. Longfellow's recordings of Longfellow's poetry have received endorsements ranging from the U.S. Poet Laureate to Longfellow's great-granddaughter. 

They are available at Longfellow's Portland and Cambridge Homes, the Wayside Inn, other historical and internet sites, and from
http://www.LongfellowPoetry.com.

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Biographical sketch by Layne Longfellow

The "Poet of the People" he was called --
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine in 1807. Son of a respected attorney, he published his first poem in the local paper at age 13. Already, literature was his one ambition. After graduation from Bowdoin College at age 17, he was appointed as their professor of modern languages immediately upon graduation. At 27, he was hired away by Harvard University. He served there with scholarly distinction, but resigned in 1854 to devote his energies and time more exclusively to his poetry. He no longer required his faculty income; in 1874, he was paid $3,000 for one poem.
 
He had become the most famous and influential of all American writers, in a time when poets could be rock stars. Never has an American poet been so honored and so beloved in his time. His death unleashed a national mourning. His reputation, though, was international. Until Dwight Eisenhower, Longfellow was the only American whose bust was in Westminster Abbey. Queen Victoria wrote that Longfellow was the only dignitary, of the many who dined at Buckingham Palace, whose presence prompted the servants to hide furtively behind curtains and corners just to catch a glimpse.

Longfellow published translations in a half-dozen languages and understood twice that many. He courageously translated Dante when that was frowned upon by both Harvard and the church. Longfellow was always gentle, always genteel, unfailingly civil, very much not of the intense, roiling character that fits our romantic notion of "poet".

His was a life of success, respect, affection, and tragedy. His first wife died of complications following the miscarriage of their first child. He later lost another child in infancy. His second wife died when, sealing locks of her daughters' hair in packets, her lightweight summer dress caught fire. Longfellow attempted to smother the flames with his own body and with a carpet. Fanny died the next day. Longfellow's own burns were so severe that he could not attend her funeral. To cover the scars, he grew the beard that he so famously wears in the portraits we all know.

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