Mike Mirabella

Does your child ever sit by themselves-alone and seemingly friendless? Meet Carla, our self-appointed social committee of one, who makes everyone at summer camp feel welcome. Carla spots a shy new boy who hides from others in his cabin, closing his curtain. Carla follows her heart and gathers a small group of fellow campers to coax him out to play games. With Carla's encouragement, our new camper builds up his self-confidence, loses his fear, and learns to enjoy his new friends. About the authors: Mike Mirabella, an established musician and publisher of children's books-and Lenny Lipton, who wrote the folk song "Puff the Magic Dragon"-sat in their living rooms writing songs as they babysat their disabled daughters. The bonus song "Little Brown Pony" includes the lyrics and music notations as does "I Used to Be Shy." The outstanding illustrations were done by Amy O'Hanlon, an inspired artist in a family of musicians who does stage projection design for several San Francisco musicals, one of which was the Bay Area Children's Theatre's She Persisted, based on the book by Chelsea Clinton.

Does your child ever sit by themselves-alone and seemingly friendless? Meet Carla, our self-appointed social committee of one, who makes everyone at summer camp feel welcome. Carla spots a shy new boy who hides from others in his cabin, closing his curtain. Carla follows her heart and gathers a small group of fellow campers to coax him out to play games. With Carla's encouragement, our new camper builds up his self-confidence, loses his fear, and learns to enjoy his new friends. About the authors: Mike Mirabella, an established musician and publisher of children's books-and Lenny Lipton, who wrote the folk song "Puff the Magic Dragon"-sat in their living rooms writing songs as they babysat their disabled daughters. The bonus song "Little Brown Pony" includes the lyrics and music notations as does "I Used to Be Shy." The outstanding illustrations were done by Amy O'Hanlon, an inspired artist in a family of musicians who does stage projection design for several San Francisco musicals, one of which was the Bay Area Children's Theatre's She Persisted, based on the book by Chelsea Clinton.

On The Luck of an Irish Sailor is a fantasy tale of how a young Irish sailor, while cast adrift in the ocean sea, is then saved from drowning by both the efforts of a mermaid princes and his Irish luck. The tale was inspired by the stories I heard as a little boy while sitting at the kitchen table at our large Italian family dinners. My grandpa and uncles would tell tales of fishing the waters off the Coast of California and up through the inland passages of Alaska. I recall my grandpa Angelo telling of the scary time when he was a cabin boy of 12, and was captured by pirates while working on the tall ships. And then there was the neverending argument of whether the strange creature my grandpa and my uncle Cam had caught off the coast of Alaska was either a mermaid or a merman. I was (and still am), that wee lad in our story, sitting wide-eyed and half-believing, but never tiring of hearing those wonder filled stories told by those 'salty old jacks'.