About Marcia |
Marcia Berneger is an educator, speaker and writer. A retired teacher who taught elementary school children for over three decades, she has worked mainly with first and second graders and children with special learning challenges. Marcia's passionate about helping children navigate their world and many of her stories are taken from her teaching experiences working with fidgety students or those experiencing typical childhood fears.
Fractured fairy tales and nursery rhymes are favorite themes in Marcia's writing. And some of her longer stories even combine these elements for rollicking mystery-adventures populated by the likes of Miss Diddle, Miss Muffet, and even the Big Bad Wolf. Watch out for that hairy spider!
Marcia lives in Point Loma (San Diego), California with her husband and three crazy dogs.
Fractured fairy tales and nursery rhymes are favorite themes in Marcia's writing. And some of her longer stories even combine these elements for rollicking mystery-adventures populated by the likes of Miss Diddle, Miss Muffet, and even the Big Bad Wolf. Watch out for that hairy spider!
Marcia lives in Point Loma (San Diego), California with her husband and three crazy dogs.
Q&A with Marcia
Here are some common questions that Marcia often gets during her presentations. If you'd like to ask Marcia a question, send her an email.
Q: When did you first start writing?
A: Writing was one of my favorite subjects in school. But the first time I was seriously bitten by the writing bug came at three o'clock in the morning about 30 years ago. I awoke from a strange dream about a face in a flower and couldn’t fall back to sleep until I’d written a huge chunk of what eventually turned out to be a 15,000-word story. Teaching, and later raising my own children, interrupted my writing. I picked it up again around 2003 and have been writing strong ever since.
Q: Where did the idea for Buster The Little Garbage Truck come from?
A: I’d been tutoring a little boy named Ethan one summer. He was afraid to go to first grade and worried how difficult it might be. I needed to find a way to help him overcome his fear. Ethan loved garbage trucks, so I created Buster: a young garbage truck who also had a childhood fear -- a fear of loud noises. Reading Buster to Ethan helped him to be less afraid.
Q: How long did it take from that first draft until Buster became a published book?
A: I wrote Buster in September 2011. It took over a year and a half, and many revisions to “finish” the manuscript enough to show it to agents and editors. I found an agent who loved the story as much as I did, and when she showed it to an editor at Sleeping Bear Press, she loved it also. The publisher accepted Buster in February of 2013 and the book was released in April of 2015, just over two years later.
Q: What inspired A Dreidel In Time?
A: I discovered that some of the tactics created by the Maccabees during the Maccabean Revolt, a Jewish uprising in Judea in 167-160 BCE, were used by George Washington to defeat the British. I wondered what would happen if someone from modern times went back in time and helped the Maccabees by telling them about these strategies. The story just built from there.
Q: What other books are you working on?
A: I'm currently working on The Case of the Missing Spoon, a chapter book mystery starring Detective Capybara and Penny Mouse, partners who solve mysteries filled with puzzles to solve and clues to find. In their first case, the detective duo are hired to find a missing spoon. The suspects include a fiddling cat, a high-jumping cow, a laughing dog, and a very grouchy Miss Diddle.
Q: When did you first start writing?
A: Writing was one of my favorite subjects in school. But the first time I was seriously bitten by the writing bug came at three o'clock in the morning about 30 years ago. I awoke from a strange dream about a face in a flower and couldn’t fall back to sleep until I’d written a huge chunk of what eventually turned out to be a 15,000-word story. Teaching, and later raising my own children, interrupted my writing. I picked it up again around 2003 and have been writing strong ever since.
Q: Where did the idea for Buster The Little Garbage Truck come from?
A: I’d been tutoring a little boy named Ethan one summer. He was afraid to go to first grade and worried how difficult it might be. I needed to find a way to help him overcome his fear. Ethan loved garbage trucks, so I created Buster: a young garbage truck who also had a childhood fear -- a fear of loud noises. Reading Buster to Ethan helped him to be less afraid.
Q: How long did it take from that first draft until Buster became a published book?
A: I wrote Buster in September 2011. It took over a year and a half, and many revisions to “finish” the manuscript enough to show it to agents and editors. I found an agent who loved the story as much as I did, and when she showed it to an editor at Sleeping Bear Press, she loved it also. The publisher accepted Buster in February of 2013 and the book was released in April of 2015, just over two years later.
Q: What inspired A Dreidel In Time?
A: I discovered that some of the tactics created by the Maccabees during the Maccabean Revolt, a Jewish uprising in Judea in 167-160 BCE, were used by George Washington to defeat the British. I wondered what would happen if someone from modern times went back in time and helped the Maccabees by telling them about these strategies. The story just built from there.
Q: What other books are you working on?
A: I'm currently working on The Case of the Missing Spoon, a chapter book mystery starring Detective Capybara and Penny Mouse, partners who solve mysteries filled with puzzles to solve and clues to find. In their first case, the detective duo are hired to find a missing spoon. The suspects include a fiddling cat, a high-jumping cow, a laughing dog, and a very grouchy Miss Diddle.