George is hardly bigger than a child's middle finger. His knees and his elbows don't bend and his legs are fused together. When Katie and Mackenzie find him at the edge of the ocean, they are unimpressed, but George keeps turning up in their lives. And what may seem ordinary to a girl and a boy can be an awesome adventure if you are six centimeters tall.

I was born in East York in 1948, the daughter of a Canadian soldier and his Dutch war bride. I graduated from the University of Toronto and became a teacher of lots of things, but mostly of art and English. I guess I have taught thousands of Toronto's great kids over the years and they have taught me too.As a child I read widely. I liked all sorts of fairy tales and animal stories by authors like the Brothers Grimm and Thornton Burgess. Maida's Little Shop by Inez Haynes Irwin was also a favourite. I have two children, Katie and Mackenzie, who gave me ideas for stories while they were growing up. Kate had a little plastic guy and I wrote a set of books about this toy from two different perspectives. Sometimes I get ideas from things I do. I like to build sand sculptures on beaches and I wrote a picture book once about finding a dragon shape in the sand. Other ideas seem to fall into my lap when I'm busy with something else. If I don't commit those to paper right away, they vanish. I'd like to do some art for one of my books. Sometimes when I can't sleep, I draw or paint a bit of a scene from one of my stories. Maybe I'll be brave enough to submit these to a publisher one day. I still live in Toronto, in a little bungalow with lots of big maples and a skunk or two. Mackenzie is here with his dog, and my daughter Katie often comes to visit.

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• Commended, Canadian Children's Book Centre (CCBC) Our Choice