Local Sharps Chapel resident Lynn Sutton Prichard-Dykes just had her first book published called “Who Cares Anyway?”.It involves her granddaughter, Lauren.

The book is about Lauren and her Grandmother Gram-me, who tries teaching Lauren about the importance of having good table manners.

This is done with humor and laughter. Lauren is curious as to why it is so important to have good manners and why it even matters. Lauren says that food tastes the same if you eat it with your fingers or by using a fork and knife. While visiting her Gram-me, Lauren has tea parties and family dinners, where she finds manners are more like rules. She realizes that manners are a way to show love and kindness to those around us, to show how much we care.

Through her lessons from her Gram-me, Lauren learns how to have good manners. The lessons are learned through laughter and mistakes along the way. Lauren learns more from her lessons than just good manners.

It’s a great way to teach children etiquette.

The book can be purchased online through Kindle or Amazon for $17.99.

Years ago, UT Extension Agent Carol Sue Hunter asked me to help teach 4-H middle schoolers a lesson on etiquette. We set up a mock restaurant on the school stage and had our play teaching table manners with the students acting it out.

In the spring, I chaperoned 8th graders on their annual Washington 8th grade trip. After eating McDonalds several days as the usual on a school field trip, Sharon Moyers and I decided to take whomever wanted to the hotel restaurant for a sit-down restaurant meal. The kids dressed up. (Now keep in mind a lot of the students had never experienced a sit-down restaurant.) We reviewed how to practice the lessons they had learned in the 4-H etiquette lesson: How to order off a menu, which piece of silverware to use and how to tip. The kids got a treat out of eating at a sit-down restaurant.

I’ll never forget when we were finishing up and the waitress approached our table, when as serious as a heart attack, a first-time restaurant student says, “Please give my compliments to the chef.”