About

As a kid, I spent lots of time reading…in the car…while other kids were outside playing…at school instead of listening to the teacher. In junior high, I read while my friend entertained herself at our sleepover. (Sorry, Kate!) In college, I read in the library instead of studying. Once, after becoming a teacher, I read through the night until 5 a.m. The next day at school was a VERY long one.

Now, as an adult, I still read…while I eat lunch…as I brush my teeth…in the bathtub. (Sometimes the water turns cold before I get out!) Reading is a huge—and delightful—part of my life, so it makes perfect sense to me that I became a writer.

My other loves are hiking, knitting, taking family road trips, cooking healthy meals, watching British mysteries with my husband, and spending time with my twin girls. I live with my family and a rescue cat named Tuxedo in Minnesota.

Other random facts about me:

  1. I can sing the alphabet backwards.
  2. I studied both Spanish and Russian in college.
  3. I am anosmic, which means I can’t smell. When I want to know if something stinks, I ask my husband to smell it. (He’s a very good sport.)
  4. I have a big box of diaries and journals dating back to first grade. If you ever want to know what I was doing on January 2, 1976, I can tell you!
  5. I helped build a wall around a Jamaican orphanage when I was fifteen.
  6. I love to make and eat my mom’s potato pancakes and homemade applesauce .
  7. I was the math fact champion of my fifth grade class.
  8. It took me six-and-a-half hours to read the final Harry Potter book—in one sitting.
  9. The first and last time I ate shrimp brains was in Malaga, Spain.

Favorite topics (fiction and nonfiction) that I’ve written about:

  • Rearing and tagging Monarch butterflies
  • Four baby robins in a nest outside my bedroom window
  • How corn mazes are made
  • Kids who’ve helped others in creative ways
  • A skunk who sprayed his friends by mistake
  • Goldilocks going to Fear Camp
  • A pair of brother-sister unicyclists
  • People with interesting occupations–like a crayon artist, a professional fisherman, and a braille transcriber

A few of my favorite books and series:

  • The Betsy-Tacy series and Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace
  • The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  • The Alvin Fernald series by Clifford B. Hicks
  • The Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series by Betty MacDonald
  • Dancing Shoes by Noel Streatfield
  • Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan
  • The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald
  • Two on an Island by Bianca Bradbury
  • Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman
  • The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
  • The Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter
  • The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
  • The Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins
  • The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
  • The Ruby Red trilogy by Kerstin Gier