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:
- I can sing the alphabet backwards.
- I studied both Spanish and Russian in college. Hola and Privet!
- 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.)
- 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!
- I helped build a wall around a Jamaican orphanage when I was fifteen.
- I love to make and eat my mom’s potato pancakes and homemade applesauce .
- I was the math fact champion of my fifth grade class.
- It took me six-and-a-half hours to read the final Harry Potter book—in one sitting.
- 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