I was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After my father died in a car accident, my mother, my older brother, and I moved a few times.

When my mother married my stepfather, we moved to a white farmhouse in northeastern Pennsylvania.  We had pets, ranging from dogs to cats to ducks to parakeets to guinea pigs and hamsters. Once, we even had a goat. Eventually I had two more brothers and a sister.

As a young girl, I had no idea I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I took horseback riding lessons, piano lessons, and art lessons. My older brother and I explored streams and woods. With my friends, I listened to Beatles music, rode my bike, attended Girl Scout camp, and had sleepovers. But mostly I liked to read and to draw.

In school, I liked art class best. My high school art teacher encouraged me.  I won ribbons -- and once a cash prize -- in local art contests. I couldn’t wait to start college, and so I skipped my senior year to begin college a year early. I declared myself an art major right away and enjoyed my drawing and painting classes.

Sometime during the second semester, a gap appeared between the pictures I saw in my head and the ones I drew or painted. I compared my art to the work of other students, and I didn’t think I was good enough. I grew worried. If I wasn’t an artist, what was I?”

The next year I transferred colleges and filled my schedule with literature classes. I took a creative writing class where I wrote short stories and poetry for the first time. I interned as a journalist at a local newspaper. I didn't know that these experiences were revealing anything to me. I just knew that I enjoyed research and writing assignments and ran to the library to get started. I stayed up all hours to write research papers, stories, and poems, often combining words and pictures in some way.

At the end of my sophomore year, I married Joe Bartoletti, whom I had dated since high school. After graduation, I accepted a job teaching eighth-grade English. It seems funny now: I never intended to teach, but kids are easy to get hooked on. For the next eighteen years, I taught eighth grade.

Along came a daughter Brandy and then a son Joe, and for many years, our house overflowed with kids, pets, music lessons, sleepovers, and sports. Most summer vacations, we camped. Up and down the east coast, we explored national parks, battlefields, forts, museums, and other historical sites. These experiences fed my imagination.

Over the years, I grew as a teacher. My students wrote poems, stories, and essays. They researched, wrote, and illustrated their own nonfiction picture books. They held poetry readings.

They published their work in the school's award-winning literary magazine, which I co-advised for fifteen years. Some even had their work accepted for national publication in anthologies.

It felt good to see my students grow as writers. They inspired me to practice what I preached. I joined a writer’s group and got serious about my own writing.

I sold my first short story in 1989 and my first picture book in 1992. By 1997, I had published three books and had two more under contract. The time had come for a difficult decision: either teach full-time or write full-time.

I already had one career that I loved -- teaching. Was it time for another? Could I make it as a full-time writer?

"Leap and the net will appear," a friend told me.

And I did. 

Today it's impossible for me to separate my love of teaching from my
love of writing and books. I often teach graduate classes or lead writing workshops.