For as long as I can remember, I have loved stories. I love reading stories, hearing stories, telling stories, and writing stories. This must be why I love libraries and train stations, both hubs leading to countless places and people.

 

I learned early on that biking was the best way to get around the neighborhood and reading was the best way to get around the world. I still travel on bikes and in books, but I also love planes, trains, cars, kayaks and hiking boots. I’ve climbed the Swiss Alps and hiked the Grand Canyon, toured the Eiffel Tower and Pearl Tower, kayaked with dolphins and canoed with a moose. I’ve traced my country’s history along the Freedom Trail and carried my new son along the Great Wall of China. I’ve spoken English on a boat in the Seine and French in a slot canyon in Arizona. And I sing in American Sign Language in my kitchen almost every day.

 

When I travel, I often travel with my favorite people on earth – my family. I get to live with these people, too, which makes staying at home its own adventure.

 

I referee football games or fly drones with my husband James in our own backyard or serve as sous chef every Saturday morning when he treats the family to huge breakfasts. I talk for hours about literature with my son Andrew, unless he’s off biking anywhere he can hang a hammock or planning a trip to another continent. I sip steaming bowls of thé au lait with my daughter Anna when she sets down the violin that fills our home with music. I make anything with Jacob – flashlights, foosball tables, snowboards – from the scraps found in our recycling bin, as long as he’s not playing ball with the neighbors.  And when Joshua comes up for air from swim club, he’s always game for a game and recently taught me how to play chess on a life-sized chess board!

 

When the drones have landed and tea bowls are empty, you might find me at Grand View University, where I teach English Literacies and Children’s Literature – sometimes with my big-eared, big-hearted dog Mickey.

 

And through it all, I read and I write. Sometimes what I write becomes a book on a shelf in a library, a mode of transportation for a reader somewhere. And if I’m very lucky, I get to meet that reader and hear new stories, and I know they will be stories that I love.