After an early career in advertising, I left the corporate world to focus on being a full time parent and, in the process, fell in love with the world of children’s literature.
I’ve been happily writing in this space ever since.
About Me:
I grew up in a big city but I love a good hike in the woods
I can tell a Sycamore apart from a Maple tree and can probably identify by sight most trees in my neighborhood
I am fluent in Russian
I have three children
One of my favorite parts of being a parent is reading with my kids
I have an identical twin sister, but no, we’ve never switched places or have ESP, though we probably could tell what the other is thinking in most situations
As a child I struggled with reading until a family friend gave me three books that changed my life and started me on a path to loving books. They were: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlotte’s Web
When I was little I used to pretend to run a library. I still love that idea
Being around books fills me with a sense of hope and possibility
My other favorite part of being a parent is being able to hang out at the children’s section of the library with my kids. It’s kind of my happy place
Books I Love:
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller
Front Desk by Kelly Yang
The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani
Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo
A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Circe by Madeline Miller
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
My Fiction:
Mira Doesn’t Fit In
Middle Grade Historical, 42,000 Words
Mira just wants to blend in. In a country like the Soviet Union, which prizes conformity, this is as much her personal desire as a social imperative. That’s why she tries to hide things about herself that make her different, like the fact that she’s Jewish and that her family will soon be leaving for America. As her family quietly begins to prepare for departure, Mira is equal parts nervous and excited about the move. She’s worried about leaving her home and her friends behind, but she’s also excited to go to a place she imagines to be a Barbie catalogue come to life.
What Mira isn’t prepared for, is that in the Queens, New York neighborhood where her family settles, she will stand out more than she ever had in her life. As Mira struggles to learn English and to fit in, she finds herself navigating two new cultures at once: American and Jewish. What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be Jewish? And where does she belong? As Mira tries to figure out the answers to these questions, she feels adrift and alone. But when a school librarian hands out books in other languages to the kids in her class, including a book in Russian for Mira, she begins to see that other kids around her are dealing with similar issues and that, perhaps, the books hold the key to helping them all find connection and to giving each of them a voice.
Spaced Apart
Middle Grade Speculative, 69,000 Words
Twins Jacob and Sylvia grew up listening to their grandfather’s stories about faraway twin planets where travel happens with a tap of a map, hills have feelings, and people live in peace on a pair of co-orbital planets. Jacob, who’s a dreamer, used to hope these places were real, even as Sylvia, who likes to question things, had her doubts. After their grandfather passes away, however, the stories stop and Jacob begins to worry that Sylvia was right all along: the stories were just something their grandfather had made up.
But on a visit to their grandmother’s house the summer before middle school, Jacob finds an unusual pocket watch in Grandpa’s attic office. It launches him to the twin planets from Grandpa’s stories where he discovers these places are not only real but need his help. The planets are headed for a collision, and Jacob holds the key to stopping it. But first, he must navigate a whole new world on his own, apart from his twin and everything familiar, to uncover the truth behind his grandfather’s stories and realize the power of his connection with Sylvia, even when they are apart.