Cheryl Hellner

My lifelong love of language began at the age of nine when my fourth-grade teacher opened every school day with a poem. I was entranced. I began writing and filling one brown spiral notebook after another with the music, rhythm, and meaning of words.

After graduate school when I became a teacher and education specialist in my local Head Start program, a new fascination emerged: the braiding of story and visual images we call the picture book. Sitting on the floor of the Cheshire Cat bookstore in D.C., I spent hours poring over story after story. Sing Up the Earth! fulfills a long-held dream of writing and publishing my own picture book stories.

I write, and tell, stories that nourish our children's relationship with the living Earth, and with their own beautiful and mysterious creativity.

As a teacher/retreat leader and writer with Dayspring Earth Ministry, my work is to awaken and nourish awe, reverence, and wonder for the sacred Earth community which is alive and singing, asking--especially now--for our wisdom and care.