Bio

I was born in 1949, in Buffalo, New York, and lived there until I left for college in 1967.  I attended the University of Michigan, where I received degrees in English Literature and Environmental Education.  Since then I have lived in various cities in Canada and in the San Francisco Bay area, where I live now.

As a child I was shy and usually lost in a world of my imagination.  I read constantly from fourth grade on, plucking books haphazardly from my parents' or the library's shelves: Romeo and Juliet, Lorna Doone, Wind in the Willows, The Caine Mutiny.  In fourth grade I was changed forever by my first readings of Shakespeare and Coleridge.  I was spellbound by their emotional directness, interweaving of thought and feeling, and above, all, the pure music of their words.

I read Little Women more times than any other book.  Like the heroine, Jo, I grew up to combine careers as an educator, mother, and children's book writer.  (Perhaps this says something about the long-term influence a children's book may have on a reader!)

I dabbled in writing as a child, but it wasn't until I had children of my own that I began to write seriously, and to think about trying to get a book published.  I seem fated to come to books in reverse order.  I mainly read adult literature as a child, but as an adult I began to read children's literature, often encountering a classic work for the first time while reading it to my children.