About Me
I entered school at the age of 5 and have never left it. I graduated a semester early from St. Edward’s University and immediately filled a fourth grade teaching position when a teacher quit mid-year.That summer I married the man I still wake up with today. I earned a masters degree in education from the University of Houston and reading specialist certification and taught for 15 years. While teaching, I became certified as a school librarian (Sam Houston State University) and switched to a much larger classroom with 15,000+ books. I’ve been happy in that career for 18 years. Concurrently, John and I raised twin boys and a daughter.
My first magazine article was published in November 1994. Since then, I have published more than 100 articles, 19 professional books, teaching guides and my first children’s book, Substitute Groundhog (Albert Whitman, 2006) which was a Junior Library Guild selection and was published by Scholastic in paperback and as an audio book.
My nonfiction big book for children is A Pet for Every Person (Upstart, 2006) and We’re Going on a Book Hunt will be out in Spring, 2008 from Upstart. I’ve also invented two educational games and a kinesthetic way to learn the Dewey Decimal system. I present workshops for teachers and librarians at the local, state and national level. And I’m still in school along with 940 four to ten year-olds. I take the lifelong learning philosophy very much to heart!
Read ‘My Life as Writing Lessons’ on my Web site.
