AnnickPress

Barbara Todd discovered a love for writing while on the shores of the Arctic Ocean in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. She began writing nutty poems after a visit from author Sheree Fitch, who assured her audience that “everyone can write a poem.” At two in the morning, by the midnight sun, Barbara’s first poem appeared and she has been writing ever since.

Barbara was born, with a twin sister, in Toronto in 1961. The day after graduating from university, Barbara moved with her husband to Bangalore, India, where she worked with children with special needs. Later, she worked as a teacher-storyteller in Toronto, and then home-schooled her three children for the next ten years in the Arctic and Halifax. Now, she’s thrilled to be working as a writer of wild and quirky children’s picture books in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

She loves cooking spicy food from around the world, knitting stripey socks, and walking everywhere. She’s crazy about Shel Silverstein’s poems, and books by Russell Hoban, Karen Hesse, Cynthia Rylant, Jane Yolen, and as many others as she can stagger home with from the library. Barbara thinks libraries are amazing.

Barbara loves writing. She is forever putting crazy ideas together, shaking them up a bit, and hanging around with a pencil in her hand to see what happens.  The possibilities, she says, are endless.