he Tales of Andergrimm represents a logical convergence of many of Trudee Romanek’s interests. Much of her professional career has been focused on creating for children in ways that entertain as well as inform.

As an editor, she has worked for such educational publishers as Holt, Reinhart & Winston, Houghton Mifflin, and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, producing teacher resource books for junior grade math, science and language arts texts. She was editor of Books from OWL for a number of years and, as a freelancer, has written numerous textbook excerpts for Scholastic, Nelson, and McGraw-Hill Ryerson. She also wrote the teacher’s guides that accompany Sanctuary Woods’s language arts CD-ROMs ‘Sitting on the Farm’ and ‘Wordstuff.’ For the past several years, Trudee’s focus has been the writing of children’s books. She is author of seven books for young readers to date (published by Kids Can Press and Annick Press), which have been nominated for numerous awards. Trudee is frequently invited to give readings, science demonstrations, writing workshops and the like in elementary and secondary schools.

The other passion in Trudee’s life is music. Through formal training, she attained her Royal Conservatory grade 8 piano and grade 6 French horn, and was a member of her high school’s concert band for four years. Throughout her life, she has sung in choirs and choral groups under conductors Brainerd Blyden-Taylor, Alan Coffin, Sarah John and others. Since 1999 she has been a member of Motherload, an amateur vocal quartet based in her home of Barrie, Ontario. Through her experience in that group, she has learned much about vocal arrangement and has arranged, for her own personal use, several pieces for four women’s voices, as well as a few for recorder and piano. She has a rather obsessive interest in lesser known musical instruments and has performed at least once on the musical saw, theremin, Boomwhackers®, and the Hawaiian nose flute. (It’s a long story…)

Trudee’s theatre background extends back to high school days where she participated in Sears Drama Festival productions for five years. She holds an honours BA from the University of Toronto, with a double specialist in English literature and drama. While at university, she was the recipient of the W. J. McAndrew Award for outstanding contribution to drama at University College. Recently, she has performed in community theatre productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella and Fran Charnas’s musical revue All Night Strut.