Right in our own backyard, on Pine Island, lives a well-known author and storyteller named Gerald Hausman. Not familiar with him? Well, many students around Florida and across the country know his name.

Hausman writes books about animals, mythology, Native Americans and West Indian culture. He travels the United States as a featured speaker for schools and libraries, telling the stories he’s written as well as those he’s collected.

Hausman was born in Baltimore and grew up in New Jersey and Massachusetts. He graduated from college in New Mexico where he met his wife, Loretta. The two of them lived in New Mexico for a couple of decades, and he first wrote there in the 1970s.

A theater minor in college, Hausman has professional theater in his background. That acting ability transformed into his book and story presentations. His storytelling became a critical and necessary part of his professional life.

“I don’t do this for love or money — but because there is no other way,” Hausman said. “When I tell stories, I pace. I can’t sit down. And I am very insistent about making sure everybody is listening. I try to find that person not listening and try to speak to him.”

One particularly challenging audience in Texas had more than 1,200 middle-schoolers to hear his stories.

“I asked the principal…are you sure you want me to do all those kids in one session?” Hausman said. “‘Yeah’ was the answer. All the teachers were sitting and correcting papers. So the only way to reach the 1,200 was to weave in and around with groups of the kids. I moved from group to group and covered the entire gym that way. By the end of the session, you could hear a pin drop.”

Hausman’s family influenced his storytelling talent. His mother often read stories to him and took him to pow-wows.

“Some people may not remember, but you could hear Native American storytellers in department stores in the ’50s and early ’60s,” Hausman said. “You could meet a 100-year-old native Oglala Sioux storyteller who could remember stories that were 200 or 300 years old. That fascinated me as a youngster.

“I was probably 8 or 9 years old when I was given the idea that stories were very old. What impressed me most was that they endured. So I became interested in preserving them.”

One of Hausman’s early books was about the Navajo. He lived among the Navajo and collected coyote stories. The book, Coyote Walks on Two Legs: A Book of Navajo Myths and Legends, was published in 1995.

Since the early ’90s, he’s written more than 70 books, about 15 of those with his wife, Loretta. The two later had a summer residence in Jamaica for 15 years. They founded a summer writing school, called the Blue Harbour Creative Writing Program, for middle and high school students. In Jamaica they collected stories and wrote more books.

Loretta is the primary researcher.

“I really like to get the facts so that things make sense or that it’s logical. We always make sure the historical facts are right,” Loretta said.

Hausman’s latest book, The Image Taker, took him on a summer book tour to the Berkshires in Massachusetts.

“It’s the greatest stories of Edward S. Curtis — stories gathered from the turn of the last century. He was the premier photographer of Native Americans. His work is sort of priceless now, if you can find one of his photographs.”

Hausman said the book is mainly for adults, but children will still love it.

“Teachers will end up doing read alouds. It has amazing stories in it,” he said. “It can be used in units on American Indian history. One of the stories Curtis found was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as told by a Crow Indian storyteller — with all the spin and twists of Native American myth.”

Two other books that Hausman featured on the summer book tour were Time Swimmer, published in early 2009, and A Mind With Wings: The Story of Henry David Thoreau, published in 2006.

Hausman has won 35 awards and honors from such groups as the American Folklore Society, the Bank Street College, Booklist, Parents’ Choice, the New York Public Library and the National Council of Social Studies. You can find Hausman’s work at www.amazon.com and at www.geraldhausman.com.