I attended Gladwyne elementary school , kindergarten through 5^th grade. It was a great place and many of the parents volunteered for different committees and activities with the students. A really neat one was “The Book Nook Press”. It was like a parent run company. Every year each student was able to write and publish a book or two. I wrote nine books while There! Some were stories that I wrote myself, and one was a class assignment to write our own version of a Paddington story.

Another was for a geography project, to map out a world trip and research all the places I would go. Then we had write letters to our families to describe where we were visiting. It was fun because it was like a virtual vacation. Each chapter contained an envelope addressed to my parents and the letter was place inside. We used pictures of stamps from each country for the envelope. Some of the places I visited were San Diego, China, Italy, and Greece. I used pictures from the internet and some of my mom’s photos from when she traveled.

It was fun writing my  Paddington the Chef story. We read Paddington in my class and then the teacher assigned us to write our own Paddington adventure. I love to cook and one of my favorite shows on the Food network was Emeril (Emeril Lagasse) – Bam! I made Paddington a chef who was a disaster in the kitchen and Emeril came to his rescue!  My Brother John is a chef, so he also appeared in the book!

Other books were about my surgeries, my dogs, and rainy day fun. 

In first grade my friend Chelsea helped me illustrate my book. When I could not find photos, or clipart, my mom would help me draw pictures. Her artwork was really Awesome! After the stories were written, we would be interviewed by a parent from the Book Nook Press, who would then help us edit our story, break it down to pages and decide where pictures would go. A week or so later we would visit them again to approve the editing and choose a binding and a back cover for our book, which was from old wallpaper samples. When many books were ready for binding a large group of parents (mostly moms) would meet and complete our books! It felt really great to see the finished product. A real hard covered book, just like the library, with me as the author!  I love looking back and reading these books. They are something I will keep forever.