It’s not easy to find books for kids ages 9 to 12. You can flip through picture books fairly easily, but books for elementary school or primary grades take longer to read. Here’s a little help for you--I suggest my new favorite book for this age group every month in my Readers List and once a year, I put all the recommendations together in a convenient book menu for you. Take it to the library or bookstore and amaze the kids with wonderful books to read!

You can’t be a pro the first time you try something new. That’s a repeated theme in my middle grade books, but I’m still learning it! In September, I tried to hike on a famous pilgrimage route--Via Francigena. I thought it was going to work, because I got an excessively-detailed guidebook from the library, set low expectations for how far we could walk, made hotel and train reservations, and kind of expected the weather to cooperate. Because it was Italy. Read about my #PilgrimFail.

Last week, my family and I visited the German Emigration Museum in northern Germany. The museum is in Bremerhaven, literally “Bremen’s harbor”, so there are

Click here to download Six Ways to Reveal Character handout as a pdf with links to Karl Iglesias’ website and to WRITING FOR EMOTIONAL IMPACT.

The summer the first Seven Kingdoms Fairy tale came out, my brand-new middle grade book, TROUBLE WITH PARSNIPS, took up the vegetable portion of my brain (I

Do you want to find books your ten-year-olds will love? There’s a new website called Shepherd you might enjoy. It connects books to each other, so you can figure out if the book being recommended is one for your kids. Speaking of “likes” it’s like Facebook for books but without ads. :) Here’s how it works:

My husband and I went looking for a half-circle of oaks he knew from thirty years ago. (No comments from the peanut gallery ;) He said their group held hands around it because it was so big (nearly 8 meters around and 24 meters tall!). It’s gotta be old: 600-800 years!

I’ve never grown vegetables in Germany--until this year. That means I need lots of new words!

The second book in the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tale series is all about exploring--with a prince who has no sense of direction!

Welcome to Debbie's Unofficial Guide To Bluesky Greetings to those finding me via the "Where Is The Kid Lit Community Online?" article in Publishers Weekly, Vox post about Bluesky, Bluesky tips blog…

This post is for all you readers of English language books who are living in or visiting Paris. Maybe you need a book for the plane home or presents for your

How do you know what your hero is capable of? A modernistic St. Martin cuts his cloak in half to share with a poor man. Mainz, Germany. Craft books like The Negative Trait Thesaurus and The Positive Trait Thesaurus can help you build strong characters.

Thick as Thieves came out in 2017 (Yay! I read it twice in a row!) and I’ve been enjoying re-reading Megan Whalen Turner’s The Queen’s Thief series. She’s

A no-spice Gift of the Magi fantasy short story set in a snow-kissed Scottish world. Limited edition hardcover and paperback.

Burg Rheinfels (Fortress Rhine Boulder) is the inspiration for the Saffron Kingdom. ©Laurel Decher, 2021.

Even more Day 1 of the travel to an environmental conference without breaking the environment.

Here’s a crossword puzzle for the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales. If you’ve read TROUBLE WITH PARSNIPS, LOST WITH LEEKS, and UNDER PRESSURE WITH A SQUASH, it

A reputation is a thing you don’t think about until it’s lost. There are so many ways to “prove” who we are today, and most of them involve your smart phone . . . My children’s author brain starting thinking about visitors without smart phones--giants from the Giant Mountains--who needed someone to speak up for them. . .

This is a view to feed your soul, so I’ll keep the words to a minimum.

In the small village of Swisstal-Dünstekoven, a one-time convent was built solely with materials scavenged from the Roman water line. Now it’s a farm with

Struggling to get your self-published book noticed? Learn five actionable strategies—from building a backlist to leveraging author communities—that will help your work rise above the noise and reach e...

Making Stutenkerle or “Bread Guys” is a fun, easy, and reasonably healthy after-school activity on December 5th.