A 'Raspberries' sampler in Scituate

After leaving a teaching career, Jay O’Callahan of Marshfield at first tried to become a novelist. His first effort was never published, but in the following three decades, O’Callahan became a master storyteller whose appearances have taken him around the world.

That early urge to be a novelist could soon be satisfied, as he looks for a publisher for his recently completed book about a young Massachusetts politician. In the near term, O’Callahan will appear at 1 p.m. this Saturday at the Front Street Book Shop at Scituate Harbor to sign copies of his fourth children’s book, “Raspberries,” and recite short passages from the story. He recently spoke to the Globe about the book and his work:

I first told ‘Raspberries’ over 30 years ago when my son, who was 4, banged his leg, and he was crying, and he needed cheering up. So I said, ‘I’ll make you up a funny story,’ and I began this story full of rhythms.

I had been learning to bake bread, and I loved the rhythms of kneading and the rising, so this baker, Simon, popped into my mind. The story is about how he used to be a baker, and why he left it and loses his way, and how he comes back to the delight of his life, baking.

After that, I worked on the story for a year, then I first told it at a fifth-grade class in Brookline, Mass., and the kids loved the rhythms, and I began telling it everywhere. The story hasn’t changed over time, but it was changed for the book because the illustrations tell so much of the story. So the storytelling, instead of taking 46 minutes, takes about 13 minutes.

The new novel I’ve done is called ‘Harry’s Our Man.’ It’s set in 1951 in the Boston area. It’s about a young professor who was in World War II, and he decides to run for Congress, and he’s not suited for it. It’s the time of the young Kennedy, and Jim Curley is still around, and it’s a foray into politics that he never should have made, but it changes his life drastically.

Writing a novel and writing a [spoken] story are completely different processes. Rhythms and sounds are very important in my work. In ‘Raspberries’ early on, you have Simon saying, ‘kneeeadin’, kneeeadin’, all I do is kneeeadin’ ....and I want the way that he says it to suggest that he’s not a happy man.

That kind of thing doesn’t really work in print, though Will Moses, the illustrator, has used colors, and curves and circles to suggest the rhythms of a New England town years ago.