CAROL NEVIUS BIOGRAPHY I BOOKS I PRESENTATIONS I BOOK ORDERING
I was an A student in high school, but eager to discover more about the world beyond Painted Post. I attended Brandeis University, taking summer jobs from short order cooking to being a newspaper switchboard operator to teaching sailing at a girls camp. I enrolled at the University of Manchester, England for junior year, and explored most of Europe and the USSR. After graduating in 1976 with a BA in Psychology, I headed off to a job opportunity in the Caribbean for more world travel, working as a sailing charter cook, snorkeling and fishing guide, and eventually becoming a US Coast Guard licensed boat captain. I married my merman, and we set off under sail through the Panama Canal and around the Pacific to Australia, Japan and Hawaii, and many delightful small ports in between, meeting other cruisers and often swapping paperbacks. At this point, I had no computer technology, except a satellite navigation system. We generated our own solar and wind power, collected rainwater, and used the ham radio to communicate. We worked odd jobs along the way, from boatyard fiber-glassing and wood refinishing to picking bananas. Yes, there were a few frightening, memorable moments, but many more peaceful and contented ones. I now live ashore with my husband, three children, a dog, cat, fish, tadpoles, lizards, birds, bugs, and the dust-bunnies of the land in Coral Springs, Florida. Known to thousands of students as Mrs. Jones, I have visited and guest taught from pre-school to high school. I am presently in charge of a sixth grade writing class, but my students will understand if I'm borrowed by other schools for occasional author visits. I enjoy doing laundry, cleaning, cooking, pulling your leg, sailing, swimming, music, traveling, reading, writing, revising, and encouraging all my kids and all my orchids to grow and bloom. Karate Hour was inspired as I watched a summer introductory class taken by my five year old. Presently, the kids are involved in Odyssey of the Mind, art lessons, surfing, marching band, gymnastics, fishing, and baseball. My next picture book, Building With Dad (Marshall Cavendish, 2006) with full color illustration by Bill Thomson, shows, from a child's point of view, a year's progress at a new school construction site, from walking the empty lot, sitting with Dad in the driver's seat of the heavy equipment, framing the individual classrooms, to the first day of school. Then comes 911 to Ten (RBC Publishing, Inc., release date yet to be announced), illustrated in vivid watercolors by Kimberly Kulaff, which counts and rhymes to teach math and fire safety.
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I'm Carol Nevius, born and brought up in upstate
New York, where my Dad worked for Corning Glass and my mom was
a social worker for Steuben County. Living in a rural community,
there were few girls my age nearby, so I read voraciously for
escape and entertainment, near the fire in winter, up in my favorite
tree in the summer, flopped on the couch or in my bed any time
of year. Books were always a big part of me. If I didn't do my
chores, the book was put on time-out!