That’s my daughter Kate. She’s the one responsible for the Rairarubia Tales.

When Kate was about eleven – long before the young lady she is today – she happened to notice on one of our bookshelves several college textbooks on reading, writing and study skills with my name on them.

“Did you write those?” she asked, surprised.
I admitted I did, and she counted them.
“All of them?”
Again, I admitted it.
“Well, then, if you’re a writer, write something I can read.”
I’d never thought of writing a juvenile book, so I asked her what I should write.
“Write the stories you and I made up,” Kate answered promptly.

She was referring to stories that we had made up over a period of a year or so. Just like the character Molly in Rairarubia, Book One, Kate was bored one day and asked me to tell her a story. I agreed, but only if she would help me. I asked her where the story should take place. After some thinking, she decided on Rairarubia, “a place that is rare, has good air, and lots of rubies.”

She also named most of the characters as we moved along in he story. I would make up a situation and ask her what should happen next. Together, we came up with what are now the Rairarubia Tales.
        
When I began to write the story at her request, I found that sometimes the plot would make a different twist, or I’d have to bring in a character to make the story read better. But basically, I tried to remain faithful to the original plots by including all the characters she helped create, which is why it took six books to complete “our story.”

So you can thank Kate for The Rairarubia Tales.