AUTHOR, SPEAKER, TEACHER, LIBRARIAN

Liza Gardner Walsh is the author of more than a dozen books, including Fairy House Handbook, Fairy Garden Handbook, Where Do Fairies Go When it Snows?, Treasure Hunter's Handbook, and The Maine Coon Cat.

She is a school librarian but has worked as a preschool teacher, high school English teacher, writing tutor, and museum educator. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College.

Although her books are on a variety of different subjects, at their heart they are about wonder, appreciation, and exploration.

FUN FACTS ABOUT LIZA

One of my favorite places to hang out when I was a kid was in the 150 year old one room school-house museum. I often would come dressed up as Laura Ingalls Wilder in my bonnet and prairie skirt.

I wrote my first book in third grade. It was about a haunted house and the main character was named Granny P. Fanny.

I loved, and still love, musicals. In fact, my very first dog was named Annie because she was a stray. I have always turned my daily activities into a song. Now my kids do it.

I used to have a lot of trouble falling asleep because I knew there was a witch who flew down from our attic and hid under my bed.

I wanted to be a sheep farmer, weaver and a poet in college so I went to New Zealand to stay on a sheep farm. But shearing sheep kind of scared me. So I focused on poetry instead.

When I was little, I didn’t know about fairy houses. I wish I had. Instead I made endless snail houses on the beach with woven dune grass rugs and sea shell beds.

My best friend and neighbor, Lincoln and I had a club called the Possum Club where we built forts in the woods. Sometimes when we got in trouble at home and wanted to run away, we would call each other on our tin can phone (two tin cans connected by a string) or our walkie talkies and run away to go live in our fort. Until dinnertime.

One time a bat got stuck in my mom’s hair as we were walking down to our car in our barn. I’ve never really enjoyed bats since then.

I played the violin in first grade and before my recital my dog really did eat my sheet music.

My brother used to make me be a human jump. I would lie down on our driveway and he would jump over me on his BMX bike just like Evil Knievel. Luckily, he never missed.