Now I write that kind of nonfiction for kids.

Isaac the Alchemist is the story of young Isaac Newton, whose childhood search for magic grew into a truly magical career.

Wild Boy is about a real wild boy trying to find a home in the human world.

In The Fairy Ring, two young girls fool Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the world’s most famous detective, into believing they’ve taken photographs of real fairies.

I still love Narnia, but you can’t go there. You can travel the real world. I want kids to know that amazing things can happen there, too.

Three Things You May Not Know About Me:

I once lived on a farm and had two pet goats.

Long ago, I played ice hockey for the University of Vermont. Ours was the first women’s team in the school’s long history of the sport. Some of us had only figure skates. At games, we used the men’s practice jerseys because we had no uniforms of our own. Today’s women’s hockey teams play much better than we ever did. But we had fun, and I learned to skate backward.

I’ve just learned how to play something called the 12-bar blues on the ukulele. It reminds me of the mathematical patterns Isaac Newton discovered about the universe. Once you get it, you can play bazillions of tunes. It’s kind of like . . . magic.

The real world is an amazing place.