Jackie french kohler biography of mahatma

But looking back I can see that I was always a storyteller. When I was very young, I loved dreaming up story ideas to act out with my friends. In the sixth grade I remember spinning tales on the playground to amuse my classmates. I actually even wrote a novel that year. Chapter by chapter I brought it in and passed it around, and my friends devoured it like episodes of a soap opera. Sadly, I threw that first story away when I reached my teens, thinking it childish and embarrassing. I wish I could read it now. (Don't ever throw a story away!) Later, while in college at the University of Connecticut, I worked summers on a factory assembly line. To relieve the boredom of that job, I made a game of making up stories. One of my co-workers would give me a character or situation and I'd make up a story on the spot and just keep going on and on to pass the time as we worked.

In addition to loving stories, I've always loved children. I was the one grown-ups adored at family picnics - the one with my arms full of babies, and a little trail of toddlers following after me everywhere I went. It wasn't until after I graduated from college, though (in 1970), got married, and had my first child, that my love of children and storytelling naturally flowed together and I began my first attempts at writing stories for her. Two sons followed, and a lot more attempts. Then, when my third child graduated from diapers, my husband gave me a brand new electric typewriter (it was before the days of computers) and I began to pursue in earnest by dream of being a children's book writer.

Three years later, in 1986, my first children's story was published in an anthology. It was a beginning, but it would be two more long years of hard work - over ten years in total - before my first book would be accepted. That book, IMPY FOR ALWAYS, came out in 1989. Over three dozen have followed.

These days I live in quaint, historic, Boxborough Massachusetts. Sadly, I lost my beloved husband of fifty years in 2020, but I see all of my children and grandchildren frequently, especially in the summer at my little cottage on Cape Cod. When I'm not writing, I enjoy painting, reading, hiking, biking, making gingerbread houses, and most of all, hanging out with family!

PS: For those of you who need to know, I was born in 1948. :)

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