Lampeter-Strasburg
West Lampeter Author Releases First Book
BY GEORGE DEIBEL
Aonce-reluctant reader has transformed into a prolific writer.
He has Shel Silverstein to thank.
Derek Etherington self-published his first book in October of 2025, and he’s already working on two more.
The West Lampeter Township resident wrote, illustrated, and designed the children’s book “Moonbeams and Rhyme Dreams” under the pen name Derek Allen. The work is available on Amazon and through his website, www.derekallenbooks.com.
“I think it’s a book that will grow with kids,” Etherington said. “It’s lighthearted humor. It’s something that will keep even the most reluctant readers engaged. I think anybody can find something in this book that they would like. It’s clean humor. It’s relatable for all ages. There’s humor in there that
Breaking Barriers With Humor and Hope
BY CAT SHANNON
When Drew Beekler takes the stage at a special event for The Janus School, he won’t just deliver punchlines. He’ll share a powerful story of perseverance, creativity and what can happen when you embrace the way you learn. The school will host “Breaking Barriers: A Night of Humor and Hope With Drew Beekler” on Friday,
March 20, at 7 p.m. at its campus, 205 Lefever Road, Mount Joy.
The idea for the program came about after Beekler’s mother, Julie Barker, came to an event at the school last year and was struck by the hardworking students she met.
“She was reminded of the challenges her own son endured throughout school and thought that Drew’s story would resonate with our students,” recalled
BY GEORGE DEIBEL
Members of the Garden Spot FFA at Lampeter-Strasburg (L-S) High School earned an award during the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
The tractor restoration team was presented with a plaque honoring them for the Best Record Book.
Juniors Rex Giberson, Jackson Allison, and Trent Thomas and senior Jack Ross delivered the presentation at the Farm Show. Seniors Sebastian Delgado and Brayden Welk; juniors Landon Giberson and Braydon Nye; and alumna Ava Immel, communications and marketing lead, also contributed to the effort of reconstructing a 1947 John Deere AN tractor.
“Rex was the chairman of that project, and I was more or less one of the mechanics,” Jack said. “The major part of the process was completely doing tearing down and cleaning and prepping of all parts for paint. Some parts were replaced if they were either damaged or just broken or not working. I know there were some things that got sent out to a machine shop.”
Rex explained how record keeping works. “Through the FFA, whenever we do projects, we use an app called AET,” he explained. “That is a centralized place to log everything. Every time we would work on a tractor, I would go into this app and make a journal entry of what we did and how long it took us, and then through that, we also list different skills that we may have gained. It’s just a place to keep everything journaled.”
“It was pretty nice,” Jack said. “I know Rex did pretty much
Derek Etherington holds a copy of his debut book. Photo by George Deibel
Drew Beekler
at surface level is light, but there are some deeper lessons and meanings in the poems too.”
It took two years and approximately 1,000 hours to produce the hardcover book, which features 50 poems and embellishments, such as foil and embossed lettering on the cover and digital designs on the pages. It’s an endeavor he never envisioned while growing up in Billerica, Mass.
“I was always a reluctant reader as a child,” Etherington said. “My mom (Rita) used to read Dr. Seuss to me every night, and I loved the illustrations and the little poems. Through my early elementary years, I wasn’t really that interested in reading.”
While he was in third grade, a classmate’s parent came to school and read Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
“It was the first time I had heard anything like that, and it was just the funniest thing to me,” Etherington said. “I went to the library after hearing it and checked the book out for weeks.”
He became a voracious
reader but never considered writing a book until two years ago. “I woke up in the middle of the night. I was sick,” Etherington said. “I was just getting over the flu, and I woke up at 3 a.m. with these silly, absurd, hilarious rhymes in my head. I could see the characters. I could hear the rhymes, so I just stayed up writing them down. It was flowing through me for hours.”
His wife, Stephanie, woke up later that morning and was astounded. “Those are amazing. You should keep writing,” she told her husband. So he did. “By the end of the weekend, I had 25 poems written, and they just kept coming to me,” said Etherington. “Six months after that, I started thinking about putting them together in a book.”
Etherington channeled
his inner kid. “It’s written and drawn from a child’s perspective,” he said. “I wanted my 8-year-old self to have a book that he would like. As a kid, it was these types of stories that I really enjoyed writing, so I realized I could put something together that kids would enjoy and parents would like to read too.”
“Moonbeams and Rhyme Dreams,” written for children between the ages of 6 and 10, has earned rave reviews from his two most important critics: his son, Bryce, 6, and daughter, Adelyn, 4. “They love it. They love the characters especially,” Etherington said. “The art is what captivates them, which is pretty consistent with what I hear from that age range. They can pick up on some of the surface-level humor, but
Mennonite Life Sets Genealogy Workshop
Mennonite Life, 2215 Millstream Road, Lancaster, will host a family systems and genealogy workshop on Tuesday, March 24, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Mennonite Life Community Room. The workshop will be led by Mennonite Life Visitors Center associate and former pastor Verle Brubaker. Brubaker will introduce the eight concepts of Bowen family systems, a theory analyzing family connections and their emotional significance. Participants will then create their own family diagram by tracing relationships and identifying patterns within their
families. The workshop will also equip researchers, pastors, and community leaders with tools to care for their communities through the framework of family systems and will connect all participants with experienced researchers.
Workshop participants do not need any prior experience with family systems but should come prepared with basic information about their immediate family tree.
There is a fee, and preregistration is required at www.mennonitelife.org/ events.
they really like the colorful, vibrant characters. They take stickers to school, and they like telling people their dad’s an author even though that’s not my full-time job.” Etherington, who works as a project manager, has written 400 poems since his middle-of-the-night epiphany. He plans to release his second book in the spring of 2027 and the third one 18 months after that. Those works will complete the trilogy and contain 50 poems, just like the debut. That will not be the end. He has plans to take characters from the trilogy and insert them into picture books and has also written holiday poems.
“I don’t see myself stopping,” Etherington said. “I’ve tapped into this new passion I never knew existed.”
Mennonite Life’s vision is diverse communities connecting across boundaries by knowing and valuing their own and each other’s stories of life, faith, cultures, and histories.
Verle Brubaker
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