| |  | | Photo by Dale Duxbury |
| | |
Hi! Welcome to my page. My name is Claudia Cangilla McAdam. When I was a little girl, I began writing poetry, and it was then I decided I wanted to be a professional writer when I grew up. And that's exactly what I did. I graduated from college with a degree in English, and for 30 years, my fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in scores of newspapers and magazines.
Much of my work has been for children. I have co-authored nine books, and two of them were books for the children's educational market. They were HEROIC ACTS (Perfection Learning, 1991) and PORTRAITS OF CHARACTER (Kagan Publishing, 2001). Photography is one of my hobbies, and my pictures accompany much of my written work. (Click here to see some samples.)
When I was young, I loved my family's Christmas trees, but I could never help decorate them because just touching evergreens caused my skin to break out in a rash. I was always the one who handed the ornaments to my parents and siblings to put on the tree.
Eventually, my allergy to evergreens went away. My love for Christmas trees never did. THE CHRISTMAS TREE CRIED was my first picture book.
How did I come to write THE CHRISTMAS TREE CRIED? In December of 2002, I was watching Home & Garden Television's White House Christmas special. I learned that the Blue Room tree had to be 18 1/2 feet tall, and I thought, "That tree would never have found a home anywhere else." It got me thinking about what it is like to be a "misfit" -- someone or something who is considered "different." I knew from firsthand experience what that was like. The rash I used to get from evergreen trees was due to a skin condition called eczema which I had since I was a baby. It was embarrassing because my hands were often scaly, cracked, and bleeding.
So here was this giant conifer, and I could just picture it growing on the tree farm, wishing it would be chosen as someone's Christmas tree. It must have been rejected and passed by year after year. I think I knew a little bit about what that was like. Those feelings were what led me to write THE CHRISTMAS TREE CRIED.
DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? is my newest book--for readers of all ages. Inspired by the photography of John Fielder, I wrote the text to this book after being intrigued with particular aspects of certain photos of his. The book takes a close-up look at little bits of the natural world and asks the question, "What is it that I'm seeing?" I pose for the reader a number of possibilities which, ultimately, beg the question, "Do you see what I see?"
| 
