When I was a child, if my parents were looking for me, they knew to scan the branches of the closest tree.  I spent hours in our maple, watching the world through green leaves.  When I wasn’t spying from above, I wandered through the tall grass of a nearby empty lot, searching for grasshoppers and anything else that scurried across the ground.

Almost as much as I loved collecting insects and worms, I enjoyed collecting words.  Early in the morning I would lie in bed, pencil and paper in hand, and write the longest word that I could think of in big block letters.  Then I would challenge myself to list every word that could be made with those letters.  Although I never imagined being a writer, I devoured books as a child.

My early fascination with nature never dimmed.  For many years I shared that fascination by working at nature centers.  Now I try to recreate the natural world with words.  The animals that live in the woods and lake near our home most often wander into my writing through stories and through poetry.

When we moved to a rural area of Michigan, bats were one of the animals that caught my attention.  I loved watching them flit over our road and swoop by the lake on summer evenings.  Could I take young readers with me on a bat’s evening journey and show how it catches a meal.  That was my goal in writing Bat’s Night Out.