I rhyme Kruck with “truck”. Some people in my family rhyme it with “book”, which I think is pretty cool too because then Carrie Kruck rhymes with “library book”. You can pronounce it either way, I don’t mind!

I was born and raised on the Canadian prairies, where the land is so flat that you can see the horizon in all directions and the sky is a huge dome above you. The wind blows so strong it can hold you up when you lean into it, and on cold nights the Northern Lights dance in the sky.

I grew up with a brother and a sister and lots of cats and dogs, and my parents always had great big gardens. One summer, my brother and sister and I had our own garden. We planted tall rows of corn around the outside so it was like a hidden kingdom, and we each had a garden gnome to protect our sections. Our vegetables grew so well that year we thought it must be magic!

We spent summers swimming at the lake with our cousins, and every winter our parents built an ice rink in our yard. Sometimes it was so cold that ice froze on our nose hairs and eyelashes!

I loved to read, and I loved to imagine. Sometimes there were so many stories in my head that I had a hard time paying attention to things around me! I believed so deeply that magical things could happen, and I searched for magic everywhere (I still do). I also worried a lot, which sometimes happens when you are very good at imagining things that other people think are impossible. But as good as I was at imagining things to worry about, I realized I was even better at imagining wonderful, exciting, magical things. I could imagine a world where kids were in charge, or had special powers, or did extraordinary things. And maybe, if I imagined them hard enough, and wrote them down, and shared them with other people, I might find more and more of those things happening in real life around me. And it worked! Magic is everywhere, even if it doesn’t always look like you expect. Maybe we can look for it together, and you can let me know whenever you find it?

Click here to see what second grade Carrie liked!

I started reading chapter books very early, so I don’t have a lot of childhood memories of picture books. However, one book that had an enormous impact on me was The Country Bunny and the Little Golden Shoes. I was enamored of brave Cottontail, a mother who, through cleverness, kindness, and absolute grit, won a coveted job that none of the boy bunnies thought she could do. I ADORED The Paperbag Princess, a fierce and clever hero who didn’t need anyone else’s approval, especially not that bum Prince Ronald! Corduroy was a favorite - I loved the scenes of the department store at night, and thinking about which bed I would choose (the one with the yellow base in front of the purple wall). And my heart was so filled by all the works of Arnold Lobel, especially the story Tearwater Tea from the book Owl at Home.

I’ve always wanted to be a detective, and I loved books like Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, and Encyclopedia Brown. The Babysitter’s Club Super Mysteries combined all my favorite things! But my very favorite author was Lucy Maud Montgomery. I read every single book of hers once a year for many years. I love Anne Shirley for her imagination, Rilla Blythe for her drama, Sara Stanley for her story telling, but especially Emily Byrd Starr, because she wanted to be an author like me, and nothing was going to stop her.

I have so many favorites that it’s impossible to choose, though I will say that Where The Wild Things Are might be the most perfect picture book ever created. My favorite picture books have more questions than answers, from authors and illustrators who know how smart kids are and how complicated the world can be. I love strange books with hints of magic that keep you awake at night wondering - what if?

There are some books that especially influenced my writing. The Night Gardener by The Fan Brothers drew me into the magical world of picture books as an adult in a way that made me never want to leave. The Skunk by Mac Barnett and Patrick McDonnell was so audaciously oddball that it broke down walls in my mind about what was possible in a picture book. The Antlered Ship by Dashka Slater and The Fan Brothers took me and my young son on a journey of questions and wonderings, again and again, that changed us both (I’ll tell you more about that story one day!). Little Brown by Marla Frazee and Saturday by Oge Mora made me think a lot about connection and struggle in stories. And Still Stuck by Shinsuke Yoshitake made me laugh and laugh and laugh!

My other favorite thing to read is middle grade novels! I especially love ones that are full of heart, sprinkled with magic, or deliciously mysterious. Some of my favorites:

The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss

Sweep: The Story of a Girl and her Monster by Jonathan Auxier

Louisiana’s Way Home and The Beatrice Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo

Front Desk by Kelly Yang

Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff

One Jar of Magic by Corey Ann Haydu

The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez by Adrianna Cuevas

Gather by Kennth M. Cadow

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman

Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk

Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh

The Art of the Swap by Jen Malone and Kristine Carlson

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia

The Myrtle Hardcastle Mystery series by Elizabeth C. Bunce

The House with Chicken Legs by Sophie Anderson

I was 6 years old when I wrote my first piece of fiction. It wasn’t supposed to be fiction – it was a journal entry for school, and it was supposed to be a totally true account of “What I Did for Christmas”. But I couldn’t think of anything to write, so...

I lied.

I began by describing my toy dog. It was battery-operated, and when you turned it on it walked across the room and every so often it sat back on its haunches to bark bark bark!

That was the true part of the story. But then, I went on.

I wrote that, on Christmas Eve, I snuck out of my bedroom and found Santa Claus in my living room. From my hiding place behind the door, I turned on my toy dog and set it walking towards the unsuspecting Santa. Just as it reached his turned back, it sat back on his haunches and...

Bark bark bark! Well, Santa was so scared that he dropped his bag of toys and fled back up the chimney!

That, my friends, was the untrue part of the story.

But what an interesting story it was! My teacher was going to love it! I added a hand-drawn illustration for proof and handed it in. A few days later, when the teacher returned our journals, my story was marked with red pen...and it read: “Santa must have been very surprised!”

SHE BOUGHT IT.

What a thrill! I felt so POWERFUL!

But then it was time to bring my journal home. I suddenly realized – everyone in my family would know I had lied! So when the bus dropped me off at the end of my long driveway, I pulled the journal out of my backpack. I tore the Santa story out of the book, ripped it into a million pieces, and threw the pieces into the ditch where they were carried away by a stream of melted snow and slush. (Except for a few pieces that I had to encourage along with a very, very long stick.)

But I never forgot the thrill of having woven a tale from my own imagination. And when I learned that we called those stories fiction, not lies – well, what a relief! I’ve been writing lies – I mean fiction! – ever since.

(This, however, is a true story. You’ll just have to trust me.)

I have two brilliant, kind, and funny kids who taught me so much about how to read a picture book - how to linger on the pictures, how to ask questions and wonder out loud, and how, in a really great book, you can keep discovering new things if you keep reading them. My kids have inspired almost all of my books, in one way or another, and they also give great advice about writing!

I love almost every food, but toast and butter is my favorite. It tastes like sitting at the counter at the diner with my grandma…being taken care of on sick days home from school…warming up on snowy mornings…it’s the ultimate comfort food!