About Susie
Teacher, Writer, Reviewer, Presenter, Consultant, Children’s Book Specialist
Like many people, I grew up in a less-than-perfect family. My mother excelled at reading aloud. When she put me on her lap and shared stories, books became a place of security, sanity, and closeness. My father died when I was two, and one of the few things he left behind was a bound book of his writings. Soon after receiving it, I wrote and illustrated my first book, Pete the Puppy. (Later, it got tossed by a janitor when I left it behind at a presentation. To him, it looked just like, well, a book by an eight-year-old.)
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Four-year-old Susie with Piglet
My mother’s reading aloud made sense when I studied for my Master’s Degree with Dr. Marguerite Bougere at Tulane University. She talked much about the “Lap Method” of teaching reading. “You put a child on your lap and read aloud,” she said, “and the child will want to read and grow up to love reading.”
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Reading aloud comforted me when I feared raising my own children. Books became my fallback, rescuing me when I didn’t know how to talk about certain subjects. How could I have shooed away monsters from my toddler son’s room without repeated readings of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are?
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Books opened conversations I never would have imagined. My daughter learned the importance of a writer’s style in fifth grade as we chuckled at an overlong sentence in A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh.
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Best of all, daily stress faded away during nightly reading sessions. Books let us escape into magical worlds like the ones in Brian Jacques’ Redwall series.
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As my children grew, so did my passion for children’s books. I’ve always been creative about getting what I want, and I wanted an unlimited supply of books. To this end, I started a business called Once Upon a Lap, carting crates of new books to people’s homes for children’s book parties. I soon discovered I loved presenting and watching people connect with books and each other much more than the selling part. Still determined to satisfy my book greed, I hit on reviewing.
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It was a way to reach a larger audience and benefit from the book reviewer’s greatest perk— free books! Over forty years, I wrote and interviewed for and currently, I am posting reels on Instagram, Facebook, and BookTok several times a week through Geems Gems. I post about books I discover for children, 0 - young adults, and also post about the gem-like insights I get as I work on my memoirs.
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Around the same time, my children’s book greed began, I started writing children’s books myself. The publication of my picture book, Extraordinary Chester (Red Hen, 1988), took me into school auditoriums where I read aloud and pulled horns and a long tail from a big black bag, turning myself into my monstrous main character.
I found working in schools so nourishing, and I looked for new ways to create book and writing communities. For thirty years, I shared literary experiences on college campuses, led writing residencies in elementary school classrooms and presented in libraries, bookstores, and community centers. Today I lead classes and critique groups where I welcome people of all ages to join me in the adventure of wondering about and delighting in books and writing.
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