Silly Lily's Rhyming Adventures in Nature

Silly Lily lives in a small apartment with her parents and cats in the medium-sized city of NoFrown Town, but her heart lies in the big outside. She loves lilies, of course, and all the beautiful flowers, but animals the most.

She treasures books and videos, but every chance she gets she goes to the Peek-A-Boo Zoo, the NoHarm Farm, the Peach Beach and the Please Trees Woods. Sometimes she travels alone, sometimes with family or friends.

When not on a real adventure, she daydreams about one. Whether it's An Aardvark that searches in the bark for bugs in the dark, or A Goat that ate her coat right off the boat, whatever Lily sees in nature, it somehow magically rhymes, and she would like nothing more than to share her adventures with everyone, who might in turn accidentally learn something.

Whether she travels by skateboard, bike or bus, she always stays safe, and friends and other good people love to help her.

JACK COOPER is the author of the poetry collection Across My Silence (World Audience, Inc., 2007). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Earth Island Journal, Rattle and North American Review. His poetry has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and was recently anthologized in Earth Song: A Nature Poem Experience (T. S. Poetry Press, NY, 2022). Cooper graduated with a BS in Biology from the University of Redlands, received a second bachelors in English from the University of Trondheim, Norway, and holds a teaching credential from Cal State Dominquez Hills. He is the former communication director at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon, and worked for many years in the same capacity at John Tracy School for Deaf Children in Los Angeles. He lives with his wife Kazuko in Eugene, Oregon. They have a garden with English peas and roses, a cat named CouCou and two sons, Jesse and Clay, in Los Angeles.

GRETA GONZALEZ is an independent artist who grew up in Corvallis, Oregon and starts her first year at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She spends her time reading, hiking and playing with her younger siblings. Largely self-taught, she has had a passion for art her entire life, fostered by her elementary education at the Corvallis Waldorf School. In 2022, she attended the selective Governor's School for the Arts in Kentucky. In 2023, her art received an Honorable Mention in the Regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Gonzalez's introduction into the world of illustration began with a recent project for the Letitia Carson Foundation, illustrating a children's book for a local elementary school. Now, she makes her professional debut as illustrator of Silly Lily's Rhyming Adventures in Nature.

DENNIS R. HOERNER PhD specialized in Literature and Psychology. He has taught at several colleges in the U.S. and was a Visiting Professor at Kanazawa National University in Kanazawa, Japan. In 1998 he put his roots down in Eugene, Oregon, where he was the Head of School at a small, non-profit, alternative high school until his recent retirement. Nurturing has been the common theme of his life-in education, psychological counseling, organic gardening, and raising children. A single dad for many years, he always took time to read books to his four kids. His 18-year-old black cat named Tipsy recently died and now joins the forever loved under a hydrangea in his garden.