Maryann Weidt always loved books – so much, in fact, that she became a librarian. After getting her bachelor’s degree at the College of St. Catherine and her master’s in library science, Weidt went to work for the Duluth Public Library, where she headed up the children’s department. Three years ago, she came back to the Twin Cities and now works for the Hennepin County library system. “As much as my dad loved being a farmer, I love being a librarian,” Weidt says.
Weidt grew up on a farm outside Hutchinson. Neither of her parents had gone to school beyond the 8th grade, but, she says, they valued education. “We went to the Carnegie Library in Hutchinson once a week where I picked out books.” Among her favorites were and are Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series. “The books are so comforting,” she says. “I love reading them in bed in the winter.”
Writing books came later. To date, a dozen of Weidt’s books have been published. She writes mainly biographies (recent subjects include Susan B. Anthony and Rosa Parks), though she has also written a couple of picture books, including Daddy Played Music for the Cows (her 5-year-old grandson Jack’s favorite), and one she is currently working on that she says is about “The sound of ice freezing on a small lake in Northern Minnesota.” It takes Weidt about three months to do the research for a biography and about a year until it’s in print. Picture books, she says, “Can take 45 minutes – or five years.”
Though today Weidt is a successful author, she had a bumpy start: 27 publishers rejected her first book.
“I don’t know if it was courage that made me keep trying as much as my own innate stubbornness, which I believe I inherited from my Germanic ancestors.
“With anything we go after in life, we have to keep trying, don’t we?”
