About the Author
Writing has been a joy for me all of my life. I love stories and I love people. My imagination for pretending and making up stories gives me great fun. When I was young, my older sister and I played “house”, “store”, or paper dolls, and we could play for hours using our imaginations.
I got involved in creative drama early through my mother’s encouragement and guidance. Mom was a talented writer and wrote monologues for me to perform. I was a “ham” and loved to be goofy characters. I had an innate sense of comedy timing and loved making people laugh.
I attended the University of Redlands in Redlands, CA receiving my Bachelors in Music, Drama and Literature. After graduation I began working on my Masters and received a Masters of Arts in Teaching a year-and-a-half later.
Performing in theatre productions and teaching theatre and creative dramatics was pure delight for me. Ever since I could hold a pencil, I have enjoyed drawing and writing. I have written many plays, poems, jingles, stories, and even composed music, another love of mine.
Being selected to teach on television on a live news show for kids offered me a totally new and exciting experience. How I enjoyed the children whom I met because of that program! Two years later I retired to enjoy having my own children. I taught creative drama and gave piano lessons while raising my sons and ended up giving piano lessons for forty-one years. I adored all my students and learned so much from them.
Now that I am completely retired, I have decided to dip my toe in the publishing world. “Deli’s Pickle” is the first book I have had published. Sink or swim, I know I will have learned from and enjoyed the experience.
I currently live in Texas with my husband, Norm. I have two grown sons, Chris and Scott. The reasons for writing a children’s book, however, are my two precious granddaughters, Makenna and Delaney.
About the Artist
Mary Rylant Batson is an award winning artist living in Trinidad, Texas. Her art studio looks out over beautiful Cedar Creek Lake where the view and her gardens beg to be painted. Her artist’s eye emerged early as a young girl in Dallas where she worked in commercial art. Her boundless creativity continued, leading her to spend her life in various facets of color and design, making the world a little more beautiful. Her artistic expressions include a salon colorist career and a landscape design business, but she was always a true artist by night.
Now that Mary has entered the second, and best phase of her life, she can pursue her lifelong passion for art. Her stylized paintings demonstrate her fascination with color and balance, oftentimes drawing on Mother Nature’s bounty. Her work is always evolving as she experiments with multiple layers of texture and color using an unconventional technique she developed. The complexity of her paintings creates depth, and her unique style catches the art lovers’ eye.
Mary is married and is blessed with two daughters and four grandsons.
Mary can be found at: MaryRylantArt on Instagram or All of Me Design on Facebook.
