Inspirations • Noises at Night • A Closer Look • Lemonade for Sale • Power of the People • Blue Ribbon Dad

	Illustrated by Jessie Reisch

The Birth of A Closer Look
Did you ever look at a blank piece of paper and think, “I don’t know what to write about!”? Well, with A Closer Look, I didn’t have to worry about that because A Closer Look came from an assignment from my editor at Rigby Publishing. The story was a part of a Guided Reading Anthology for fourth and fifth grade school reading programs. I was given a topic (making inferences), and list of synonyms and antonyms I needed to include in the story. So it was my job to create a story within those boundaries. The theme of A Closer Look was borrowed from Suspense Thriller movie maker, Alfred Hitchcock’s, Rear Window. This story is about making inferences-guesses based on clues the main character thinks she sees. Her imagination gets the better of her until, at a closer look, she realizes what she thought she saw was not it all!