Barbara Higgins-Dover remembers her grandmother making cookies one morning when she was a child. But her grandmother used a key ingredient not likely found in most cookie recipes: catfish lard.

It might sound unusual, but it made sense for Higgins-Dover’s grandparents, Richard and Theda, who learned that being resourceful had its payoffs.

The Higgins family lived off of the river and used fishing to provide food and income. They owned a bait shop and fish market in North Lawrence, and Higgins-Dover’s grandfather fished in northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri during the middle of the 20th century.

Higgins-Dover, a Lawrence author and educational curriculum design specialist, drew inspiration from her grandparents’ lifestyle for her new children’s book, “Catfish Cookies.”

“I saw a lot of resourcefulness in both of my grandparents,” Higgins-Dover says.

“Catfish Cookies” tells the story of Rippler, a little blue catfish who lives in the Kaw River near Bowersock Dam. The catfish faces big, mean catfish who bully him, but Rippler finds a way to get through teasing and taunting by believing in himself. Higgins-Dover relates Rippler’s story to the resourcefulness she learned from her grandparents.

“It’s a representation of inner strength depicted in a social-environmental context,” she says.

Higgins-Dover published the book by partnering with the Kaw Valley Heritage Alliance. The alliance has made “Catfish Cookies” the first publication of its River Roots Series, a collection of books that combine a children’s story with environmental awareness.

“The way the story is woven shows you different parts of what is in the river,” says Alison Reber, executive director of the alliance and developmental editor for the River Roots Series.

The book incorporates historical and geological aspects of the river and the dam, biological details of the fish used in the story and others native to the river, background on Higgins-Dover’s grandparents, instructions on how to catch your own fish and a recipe for cookies – catfish lard optional.

Reber hopes the book will get the community excited about the river.

“Sometimes people talk about the river,” she says, “and they are not as excited as they could be, not as aware as we once were.”