Books like Princess Naomi Helps a Unicorn — picked by fans

My only granddaughter and her love and fascination with unicorns is the reason why I dedicated Mysty the Mystical Unicorn to her! I hope that Mysty inspires children everywhere to focus on their imagination, creativity and to always believe in themselves! My desire to write a children’s picture book started at a very young age, reading is a passion of mine that my own children inherited and now my grandchildren too! My wish is that all children will love Mysty and enjoy her adventures as well as the five books that I have recommended. Always keep on believing in magic, miracles, and yourselves!

My only granddaughter and her love and fascination with unicorns is the reason why I dedicated Mysty the Mystical Unicorn to her! I hope that Mysty inspires children everywhere to focus on their imagination, creativity and to always believe in themselves! My desire to write a children’s picture book started at a very young age, reading is a passion of mine that my own children inherited and now my grandchildren too! My wish is that all children will love Mysty and enjoy her adventures as well as the five books that I have recommended. Always keep on believing in magic, miracles, and yourselves!

My only granddaughter and her love and fascination with unicorns is the reason why I dedicated Mysty the Mystical Unicorn to her! I hope that Mysty inspires children everywhere to focus on their imagination, creativity and to always believe in themselves! My desire to write a children’s picture book started at a very young age, reading is a passion of mine that my own children inherited and now my grandchildren too! My wish is that all children will love Mysty and enjoy her adventures as well as the five books that I have recommended. Always keep on believing in magic, miracles, and yourselves!

My only granddaughter and her love and fascination with unicorns is the reason why I dedicated Mysty the Mystical Unicorn to her! I hope that Mysty inspires children everywhere to focus on their imagination, creativity and to always believe in themselves! My desire to write a children’s picture book started at a very young age, reading is a passion of mine that my own children inherited and now my grandchildren too! My wish is that all children will love Mysty and enjoy her adventures as well as the five books that I have recommended. Always keep on believing in magic, miracles, and yourselves!

In 1972, I started an early childhood center in the Monadnock Region in New Hampshire. The focus was on child-centered education, with an emphasis on working with children outdoors. I've spent the last 50 years continuing to connect children with nature in schools, nature centers, national parks, museums, and in families. I taught graduate courses in developmental psychology, cognitive development, place-based education and have done hundreds of professional development workshops for early childhood and elementary school teachers. As a father, I focused on connecting my own children with nature. My son is a ski coach and runs an ecotourism kayaking business. My daughter is a theater director and writes grants for an environmental non-profit. 

I was born into a large, unique family. Our house was nestled in the Colorado foothill mountains. Our small tv with the rabbit ear antenna had one fuzzy station, so we depended upon our imaginations for entertainment. We read fairy tales, performed puppet shows, fed fairies on the full moon, painted, drew, wrote stories, explored the canyon. I once observed a small pebbled cylinder inch its way across a puddle. I thought it was magic! It was a caddis fly larvae. That spark of excitement from nature, imagination, and whimsy are what inspire me today when I create. I hope these books will inspire you–or at least make you laugh.

Who doesn’t like space? I love learning about space! Tip: Picture books are easier to comprehend compared to graduate courses – there’s only so much of Newton-Euler dynamics, inertia tensors, eccentricity vectors, etc. one can handle. Plus, there are no nasty mind-boggling equations in picture books. I mean, do you really want to calculate the maximum flight path angle and the true anomaly at which it occurs? Or solve Kepler’s equations for hyperbolic eccentric anomaly? No, right? Always stick to the picture book if you have a choice! I mentioned some fun picture books (fiction and non-fiction) with amusing or complementing illustrations that helped me on my journey to understanding space. Enjoy!

I’ve always loved mysterious and hidden places — and they often appear in my writing. My Summer (with Robots) is a great example, as both an underground desert fort and a mysterious house inhabited by robots play significant roles. Both were inspired by events from my childhood in Tucson, Arizona, but who hasn’t created secret places of their own? How about a blanket fort? Or a treehouse? Or maybe you were that kid who made a private den by pulling the covers up over your head and reading your favorite book by flashlight? I hope my selections help you recapture this simple thrill of discovering mysterious places!

I was bullied as a child, both at home and in school. My parents always took my little sister’s side, and punished me. When I got bullied at school, my parents and teachers just told me to work harder on throwing a ball. My escape was books. I found it reassuring that kids in books who got bullied survived and learned and had fun in their lives even if they also had to deal with bullying.

I often turned to my imagination when I was a child. Nobody Can Take My Happy Away was inspired by the times I was bullied. My peers teased me about my clothes, my teeth, my home, and how I talked. I wanted to hide from everyone, so I had fewer opportunities to make friends. Because I lived in my own head, I found acceptance in the world of make-believe. I read books about strange worlds with characters that thrived in their surroundings. Eventually, it didn’t matter if someone teased me at school. Reading these books helped me be myself. I found strength in being the odd one out.