Kind Heart

About the Book

Kind Heart is not so much an in-your-face anti-bullying book. It’s more about how parents raise their children to be kind to all people, no matter the color of their skin, if they have a disability or if they’re different from other kids. The main character has a birth defect, but he never lets this get in his way, and he constantly sticks up for the underdog or a classmate that is different from others.

I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, in the ’60s where prejudice was rampant. I grew up Protestant in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood. Our family became friends with neighborhood families whom were Catholic. When I was five or six, one of our family friends told me I couldn’t play with them because I wasn’t Catholic. I was crushed. I thought something was wrong with me because I wasn’t Catholic! This affected me greatly and is part of the reason I wrote this book. Sometimes we meet, or grow up with people we may think will be a good role model —instead they give us a model of how not to be!

About the Author

Tannis L. Casement was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1959. The family immigrated to the United States in 1964. They landed in Omaha, Nebraska, because it was approximately a one day drive to visit grandparents and other family in Canada for summer vacations. The family moved to Bellevue, Nebraska, in 1966, and Tannis grew up and has lived in this area most of her life. She has one son and one grandson. She currently lives on acreage with her husband Daniel, in Glenwood, Iowa— across the river from Bellevue, Nebraska. She became a US citizen in 1988, the first one in her family to take the step to US citizenship.