About Me

adrienne

Hello!

This is the page where I tell you all about me.

Here’s the first thing you need to know: I am all about books.

Here’s the second thing: I love to work with kids.

Here some more things: I have a family (a husband and 2 boys, plus a mom, a step-dad, 2 sisters, their husbands, and 2 nieces - all living nearby), two dogs (Pepper and Daisy), 9 chickens (they don’t have names, but I call them my ladies), and a big garden – flowers and vegetables. I am equal opportunity that way.

I like to write.

I like to read.

I love to make books.

The history of me (warning: longish!):

I was born in Clearwater, Florida, and spent my first 8 years living in Sanford, Florida, which is kind of near Disney World but Disney World wasn’t invented until I was 3. I went to Hopper Elementary School from kindergarten through third grade, and I remember that I loved it. School was so fun! I had lots of friends, including my neighbors, the Robinsons, who both seemed 120 years old to me but were probably more like 70. I used to sit on the swing with Mr. Robinson and he’d peel oranges for me that had grown in his yard. Mrs. Robinson had plastic on her floors so you knew where to walk. We had banana trees in our yard which grew tiny, delicious bananas. And our house in Sanford was across the street with the hospital which was convenient when my mom had my two sisters, Heather, who was three years younger than me, and Melissa, who was five years younger. Also, one time my dad practically cut his finger off and all he had to do was walk across the street and they sewed it back on for him.

The whole time I’m a little girl I’m reading, reading. My mom and dad read to me, and when I learned to read I read to myself. The first book I read by myself was The Little Engine That Could, by Watty Piper. Or maybe Go, Dog, Go, by P.D. Eastman. One or the other. Ask my mom.

When I was 8 we moved to Columbia, Missouri, where my mom was going to school to be an engineer. My dad didn’t come. They’d gotten divorced, which wasn’t traumatic for me at all, although the move to Missouri meant my sisters and I would have to fly to Florida to visit my dad once a year, which was kind of scary. In the 1970s kids flew by themselves and no one watched after them like the flight attendants do today. I’m not kidding. I guess everyone figured that if you stick three little girls on the plane in Missouri then they’d arrive in Florida a-ok. Which I guess makes sense, except for when those 3 little girls have to change planes in Atlanta.

Anyway, Missouri was okay. I went to Rock Bridge Elementary School and I was a Girl Scout. That was 4th grade. For 5th grade we were redistricted and I went to some other school in Columbia, then half-way through the year my mom got remarried and we moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I went to a school where the kids played marbles during recess. That’s all they did: play marbles. In Grand Rapids we lived in an apartment in town, which was crowded because now we had my mom, me, my sisters, my step-brother, my step-sister, and my step-dad, but it was right around the corner from a convenience store which was fun because we could buy penny candy, and more importantly, marbles.

The whole time I’m still reading. Now I’m reading because my family is chaotic and when I read, I can go somewhere else. When I was a kid I could read and block out everything that was going on around me. I wish I could do that now!

Then my step-dad got laid off and we moved back to Missouri. I went back to Rock Bridge for 6th grade and then I went to Jefferson Junior High School for 7th and 8th. I know many people complain about their middle school days, but I loved that school and I really loved all my friends. We didn’t talk about each other or pick on each other or say mean things about each other, like so many people say happened to them when they were that age. Instead, we had sleepovers, went on camping trips with science club, put on puppet shows, and made up this odd language with words like meebu and teebu. I haven’t the faintest idea what those words meant, but I still think it’s cool that we had our own language. I guess we were kind of nerdy, but whatever. We didn’t know we were nerds, or maybe we didn’t care. We were unique, which was cool.

Again, in junior high I’m reading. I read books by Judy Blume and Paula Danziger and whatever else I can get my hands on. I’m also starting to read books from my mom’s bookshelf. I think this is the first time I read The Once and Future King, by T.H. White, which is still one of my favorite books of all time.

The summer before 9th grade we moved to Winchester, Massachusetts. By now I was completely used to moving but I missed my old friends a lot. It was slow-going at my new school, Winchester High. Unlike my old schools, all the kids at this school had been in the same middle school together, and it was hard to break in. But eventually I made it – got friends, did okay in school, had a few boyfriends, etc. Normal high school stuff. I belonged to a group – I guess you’d call it a “clique” although again, it wasn’t a mean group or even a particularly exclusive group to belong to. We thought we were alternative and punk rock. Which I suppose we were, if you consider that the mainstream kids at my high school were all about sports, big hair, and BMWs. We were more about music, dying our hair funky colors, and skateboarding. My group of friends even had a name: The Freaks. We were pretty proud of that. It was a fun, full, experience and despite my best efforts I also got a pretty good education at that school! And – get this – we didn’t have cell phones, texting, or THE INTERNET! I know! How did we survive?

I was still reading. Reading, reading, reading. In English class I’d read the assigned books the night they were assigned. If I was asked to read a book in another class, like history, I’d pick big fat fascinating books, like One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

And then I became a grown-up, kind of. I went to college, where I learned a lot and met some fine people. After college life sped up. I got a job teaching high school in Dexter, Maine, which is in the middle of Maine, a very cold and wintry state. I remember driving to work in the dark in the morning and driving home after school in the dark. I remember working really, really hard. I remember being 21 and teaching 17 year-olds, which wasn’t very fun for about a million different reasons. But 2 good things came out of that job: the knowledge that I could do anything, if I tried hard enough, and that librarians were cool. I learned this from Susan Abel, the librarian at that school.

After I quit that job I moved in with my sister in Northampton, Massachusetts and got a waitressing job while I decided what to do. I lived with her, then some friends, met my (eventual) husband, then moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to go to graduate school to become a librarian. Graduated, got a job, had my older son, adopted my younger son, started my publishing company, worked some more – and blammo – here I am now.

And still, I’m reading.

My writing

I have always been a reader and I always knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. That didn’t mean that I wrote a lot when I was a kid. I didn’t really start working on my writing until I was out of school a couple of years and I didn’t start getting serious about it until I was married and working.

The first things I had published were book reviews and magazine articles.

Next, I had a story for kids in an on-line magazine: The Red Shoes

Then I took a little time-out to have my children.

And finally, I had my two picture books published: When I Met You and Mishka: A Story of Russian Adoption.

Spider magazine is going to publish a story I’ve written.

I’ve also written a young adult novel that’s been accepted by a publisher. I’m not sure when it will be out. I have a bunch of other projects in the works as well. Hopefully I’ll have more news to share with you soon!

I also have written a bunch of stuff on-line and in print for grown-ups. For a little over a year I was a professional blogger for adoption.com, and I also write a blog about energy efficiency for my family’s business: Home Performance NC.

Facts and Figures

Graduated from…