I wish I could be like many other authors and tell you that writing has been a passion of mine my whole life. Let me just say – it is now. Actually, I worked as an engineer for years before teaching elementary school kids. Still, I had the idea for Red Bear and his Friends many years ago and finally committed to turning these ideas into my books.
Guess what? I have four boys of my own. All of them are grown up now and very independent. Reading was always a priority as they were growing up. To this day, we have kept all their storybooks. I’ve lived in Minnesota, Michigan, Hawaii, and California. Also, I have been fortunate to travel throughout the world a bit. I very much appreciate the history and culture of everywhere I have lived or visited and wanted to incorporate that into the characters of my books.
To share my interests with you, I enjoy art and being, or trying to be, creative. I like doing abstract type work, and I especially like graffiti or street art styles. I feel I am at the 5th grade level when it comes to my own art (apologies to all the 5th graders out there, I know you are talented…). And guess what else? I was able to sketch out the original Red Bear and Friends characters. My great illustrator, Tanya, was able to bring them to life.
It is important to me to continue on with more books involving Red Bear and his friends. I can imagine them getting into all types of adventures but mostly just hanging out, talking, and helping each other work through day to day situations or problems. It’s just like most groups of friends do, but probably not at a coffee shop.
My goal with these books is to help kids understand the importance of having their own group of friends. Hopefully, they include kids with diverse social and cultural backgrounds.
Anyway, if you are a kid reading this (congratulations on getting through it by the way), I hope you enjoy reading about Red Bear and his Friends. But more importantly, I hope you have your own group of friends that you can just hang out and share with.
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