It was an honor to speak at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH) on Friday, October 23. This is the oldest Holocaust museum in the United States. In 1961 at Hollywood High School, a group of Holocaust Survivors taking English as a Second Language classes found one another and shared their experiences. They discovered that each of them had a photograph, concentration camp uniform, or other precious primary source object from the Holocaust era. They decided that the

I've heard some incredible stories since I started working with the stories of World War II. One of my favorites is the Anne and Margot Frank / Juanita and Betty Wagner pen pal story. The Iowa pen pal connection was one that had a profound effect on me for two reasons: 1) Anne Frank was my hero when I was in the fourth grade. I wrote about that in my book A Walk With Esther. Anne was so real to me and I read the diary over and over. 2) Anne didn't have a pen pal in NYC or LA,

Sisters Eliana and Salma Chabner worked diligently to write and illustrate the important story of Jewish survivor Ruth Goldschmied Sax. It was Eliana's bat mitzvah project and her older sister was happy to give her a hand completing it. The girls loved meeting Ruth and hearing her story, then documenting it for young readers. As a young girl in Czechoslovakia, Ruth's parents tried to escape the Nazis horrors but weren't able to. They suffered in the death camps watching thous

You may already know how important the three Esther's in the Quad Cities were in my starting A BOOK by ME. Recently, I had the privilege of meeting a Jewish survivor in Laguna, California whose name is Esther as well. She would like her story told by a young author. Esther and her husband graciously invited me to their home for lunch. There she told me the story of horror for her family during the Nazi reign of terror. Soon she will meet with a writing coach and a young perso

Ava Goodson, age 10, of East Moline, Illinois was born with Cerebral Palsy and uses a wheelchair or a walker. With limited fine motor skills, Ava became an avid reader at a very young age. She loves to research after reading a book, so she got a laptop early as well. Since she can't run and play, she does more reading and researching than most kids. She wrote a book for the A BOOK by ME series two years ago and today Peaches & Wheelchairs has been donated to elementary school