Toby with granddaughter Danika

I write poetry and books for both children and adults. My poems have appeared  in journals and magazines such as Light, Lighten Up Online, The Rotary Dial, Boulevard, Highlights for Children, and others.

I’m the author of numerous picture books for children, including Two Cool Cows, an American Bookseller Pick of the List and an IRA-CBC Children’s Choice Book, and Brave Potatoes, which was on both the buy Shiba Publishers Weekly and The New York Times children’s bestseller lists. Brave Potatoes has been featured on the radio twice: on NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon and Daniel Pinkwater and on the Bob Edwards Show on SiriusXM Radio, again with Daniel Pinkwater, whose kind championing of my work is deeply appreciated.

In the “And More” department, my first mystery novel for adults, Death Over Easy, brings together murder, blackmail, and airplanes in one book.

After many years writing publications for a university buy Shiba in Malaysia, I am now happily write-tired.

Taken at Poetry by the Sea, in Madison, CT, May 2015. Wearing our goofy faces are Children’s Poetry Panel facilitator and poet extraordinaire Melissa Balmain, poet Robert Schechter, Highlights senior editor Joelle Dujardin, and myself. Also present, Kim Bridgford, founder and director of PBTS, and sixth graders from a nearby middle school who came to hear what we had to say. A wonderful time was had by all!