Carol Reed-Jones

Hi, welcome to my web site. I am a children's author. When I'm not working on a writing project, I'm either visiting schools to do writing workshops and assemblies, or I'm hiking or playing in a marimba group with friends.

Ever since second grade, when I saw a film about the husband and wife team who wrote and illustrated the book about a hermit crab named Pagoo, I've known I wanted to be a writer.

In third grade I wrote my first story for fun, about Pumpy Pumpkin, who finds buried treasure with the help of his animal friends. I enjoyed all the creative writing assignments I had, from grade school to college--but not reports, which I tended to do at the last minute. Now I like writing nonfiction information in a creative way, like setting the salmon cycle to a poem.

Often, in classes or written articles, writers are advised to write what they know. I prefer to choose what I'd like to know more about, then write about it. It's impossible to be bored when you're learning great new stuff all the time. The thing I like best about being a writer, after the creative thrill, is digging around for new things to discover and write about.

NEWS FLASH!
Hildegard of Bingen: Woman of Vision, my biography of an amazing 12th-century poet, composer, naturalist and advisor to world rulers, is now available through bookstores and online through Amazon.com. For ages ten to adult. 80 pages, paperback. $7.99. Includes b&w illusrations, map, timeline, sheet music to a song of Hildegard's, recipe, index, study suggestions, and bibiography.

Poetry has so many wonderful forms: free verse, an anything-goes type of nonrhyming poem; the sonnet, sestina, and other strict forms that force you to be creative within narrow boundaries; narrative poetry--like a lyrical story with line breaks and no rhyme; spare haiku, that captures a moment like a snapshot.
Poems can be short or long, whimsical or serious. Poetry can change the world for the better. If you'd like some ideas about writing poems, click on Write Poetry on the menu bar. I've included some of my favorite books on the writing of poetry.