More About the Author

About Me

This photograph is my family's ancestral village of Pyrgos on the volcanic island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea.

My father emigrated from Greece after World War II and became a food scientist. This is a photo of him at age 16 on the Nea Hellas, sailing into New York Harbor in 1948. My mother is a fifth grade language arts teacher from Bayonne, NJ.

I'm the author of over 30 books for children and teens. I write about the environment, history, social justice, and people who make a difference. My books have been honored with the Asian/Pacific American Library Association Award for Literature ( Picture Book), Amelia Bloomer Top Ten List, Junior Library Guild Selection, SCBWI Martha Weston Grant, Paterson Prize for Books for Young People (Picture Book), and more.

I have an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. The college is on a hill in Montpelier, the state capital, where the temperature is way below zero in January. The only way to keep warm is to write faster.

Public Library

My local public library is where I find new books to read and start many of my own book projects. I don't know what I'd do without it! I also like to visit other libraries, especially The New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Research

I like to visit the places where my characters lived and worked. Sometimes I take my family, because they ask great questions and give me ideas. On a trip to Roosevelt's Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia and the F. D. Roosevelt State Park, I took my mother, who remembers the Great Depression and President Roosevelt first-hand.

Working on a story on hawk migration
at Hawk Mountain, PA.

10 Things About Me

1. I grew up in an 11th floor apartment in Brooklyn, NY.
2. In elementary school, I played Dorothy's dog Toto in the Wizard of Oz and Fern's mother in Charlotte's Web.
3. This year I planted a butterfly garden in my backyard.
4. I am working on a novel about vultures.
5. My son's two pups Rin and Appa are my favorite dogs.
6. I lived for a year in a round house in Exmouth, England. Sometimes I got lost finding my room.
7. I try to read a new poem every day.
8. I read The New York Times every morning.
9. My favorite place is Santorini, where my grandfather was born.
10. I'm learning to play Irish music on my fiddle.

My family's apartment on Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

My family

Running my first 5K race on New Year's Day in NJ. It was cold!

Visiting a children's public library in Elsinore, Denmark in 2019.

How I Learned to Write...

A page from my Five-Minute Writing Notebook.

I started writing every day when my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Redkey at Burr Farms School, initiated "Five Minute Writing." We had to open our little brown notebooks and keep our pencils moving for five minutes every morning. No stopping! No worries! I loved it. Even then, I liked to revise (see the crossed-out words!).
My first real job was as a newspaper reporter in Boston. With my notebook in hand, I forgot that I was shy, and learned to talk to many kinds of people -- senator, trumpeter, fisherman, lighthouse keeper, scientist, and more. To meet deadlines, I had write fast, and finish stories in a day. I also had to learn to spell.
Now I write books for children and teens. What an awesome responsibility. I try to write about things I care about, since I have to spend a long time researching, editing, revising, and re-writing. Things like voting rights, elephants, science, and human rights.

Poetry

Writing poetry helps me to become more aware of my word choices and what matters. "Seeing Jupiter" is a poem I wrote about standing in my brother's field in South Jersey on a summer night with my family. It was published in Hoot Review, a cool literary magazine printed on a postcard.