About Caroline
The house I grew up in on Fair Oaks Blvd in Sacramento, California was full of books. They lined the shelves in the living room and the dining room. They were stacked in piles by my father’s rocker, and they were even double shelved in cabinets above the fire place. A burglar once broke into the house when we weren’t home and opened all of the cabinets. We had to giggle at how disappointed he must have been to find nothing but books.
The books I remember reading or having read to me include Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes and Tennis Shoes, Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, and, of course, The Hobbit. The Hobbit was a whole family read meaning my father read from his rocking chair while my sister, my mother and I all lay together on the bed and listened to the adventures of Bilbo Baggins. I would get tickled just saying his funny alliterative name. |
I have not taken a straight path to becoming a children’s writer, but when I look back I realize that’s what I always wanted to be. Here is an early outline for a book of fairy tales that I made as a child.
I am now retired from teaching at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. Guilford is a wonderful liberal arts college with a Quaker history. Guilford gave me the opportunity to take students to Oxford, which is how I got started researching and writing about Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
My new book about Ruth Asawa comes out of an interest in Black Mountain College, a now defunct liberal arts college that produced some of America's most famous mid-century artists and creative geniuses such as Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenburg, John Cage, and Charles Olson. Black Mountain College was located near Asheville, North Carolina
For the last 25 years or so, I have live in Greensboro, North Carolina with my philosopher husband, and several big slobbery Labrador retrievers. My two super smart, super fun daughters who inspired me to start writing for children have now flown the nest, but they are still my first readers and best critics.
My new book about Ruth Asawa comes out of an interest in Black Mountain College, a now defunct liberal arts college that produced some of America's most famous mid-century artists and creative geniuses such as Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenburg, John Cage, and Charles Olson. Black Mountain College was located near Asheville, North Carolina
For the last 25 years or so, I have live in Greensboro, North Carolina with my philosopher husband, and several big slobbery Labrador retrievers. My two super smart, super fun daughters who inspired me to start writing for children have now flown the nest, but they are still my first readers and best critics.