About Andrea 

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1956, the oldest of eight children, and raised on a steady diet of Dr. Seuss, which probably accounts for my love of all things rhymed.  Over the years I also devoured Ogden Nash, Jack Prelutsky, and Douglas Florian but never considered a career in poetry for myself until 1991.  On hiatus from paycheck-generated labor, and at home with two toddlers, I signed up for a children's writing course and began writing and rhyming in earnest.

I joined the local SCBWI, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, chapter in 1993 and was nicknamed "The Meter Maid" by my fellow aspiring authors. 58 rejections later I sold my first poem.  Since then I have had humorous verse published in children's  magazines, parent's magazines, teaching journals, craft books, and poetry anthologies. In 1998 a wonderful editor from Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Caitlin Dlouhy, discovered me, and the rest is history. Here's What You Do When You Can't Find Your Shoe is my first picture book. The Snack Smasher, an equally hilarious poetry collection, will hit the bookstores in February 2007. Currently, I write in rhyme in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Jupiter, Florida, where my husband and I and our two children divide our time.

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