Anonymous

Janet Riehecky is a free-lance writer for children. She published her first book in 1988 and since then has published 115 books for children. Her work includes both fiction and nonfiction and ranges from preschool picture books to junior high social history and biography. Her twenty-four volume series Dinosaurs! won the 1989 Summit Award for Best Children's Nonfiction, presented by the Society of Midland Authors. In fiction, she has done a series of fairy tale rewrites and a mystery series for intermediate readers called The Red Door Detective Club. The first three books in that series are The Mystery of the Missing Money, The Mystery of the UFO, and The Mystery of the Dragon in the Dungeon.
Janet has also worked as a high school English teacher, a college professor, and a children's book editor. She earned a B.A. in English Education at Illinois Wesleyan University, an M.A. in Speech Communication at Illinois State University, and an M.A. in English Literature from Northwestern University. She has recently completed her second two-year term on the Midwest Board of Mystery Writers of America, and she served as the National Director of Mystery Writers of America=s literacy outreach, Kids Love A Mystery, from 1998 to 2004. Under her directorship, Kids Love A Mystery expanded from half a dozen programs to well over a hundred in thirty-one states, involving 10,000 kids. She is an adjunct writing professor at Judson College in Elgin, Illinois, and a member of the Society of Children=s Book Writers and Illustrators, Mystery Writers of America, and the Society of American Magicians. She is a popular speaker in elementary schools where she gives a variety of talks including "The Magic of Writing," in which she uses magic tricks and illusions to illustrate the creative writing process, "Mystery and Magic," in which she explores how to write a mystery, and "Dinosaur Encounter!", in which she uses her extensive collection of fossils and museum-quality casts of dinosaur bones to teach how scientists use these Aclues@ to learn about dinosaurs.