Michelle Mulder loves taking up life's unusual opportunities. In recent years, she's explored much of Canada by bicycle, volunteered in a rural Andean village, led creative writing workshops in the Arctic, and worked as a simulated patient for medical students.

She loves writing about kids seizing unusual opportunities, too. Her most recent early reader, After Peaches (Orca Books, 2009), follows a young Mexican refugee and her family who decide to travel across BC, harvesting fruit. Maggie and the Chocolate War (Second Story Press, 2007) is based on a true story when, in 1947, kids across Canada joined forces to protest skyrocketing chocolate prices. Yeny and the Children for Peace (Second Story Press, 2008) is set during the rise of the Children's Peace Movement in Colombia, a movement 2.7 million children strong in 1996. Both books have met with critical acclaim, and the best reviews have come from kids who like the books as proof that they, too, can take action to change the world.

Michelle is also the author of three picture books set in the Halifax Harbour: Theodore Too and the Too-Long Nap (Nimbus, 2006), Theodore Too and the Shipwreck School (Nimbus, 2007), and Theodore Too and the Mystery Guest (Nimbus, 2008). The books feature creative tugboat characters who find adventure on the most ordinary of days.

A passionate reader from an early age, Michelle is delighted to visit BC classrooms to talk with young people about reading, stories, and writing. Her presentations focus on the steps of her writing process (including the hunt for stories and how she develops characters), as well as things present-day kids in Canada can do to change the world. Michelle arrives with show-and-tell tidbits from her story research and aims to inspire lively discussions among students.

Michelle has lived in Vancouver, Boston, Halifax, and Montreal, and now makes her home in Victoria, BC.

Publications

After Peaches. Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2009.

Yeny and the Children for Peace. Toronto: Second Story Press, 2008.

Theodore Too and the Mystery Guest. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2008.

Maggie and the Chocolate War. Toronto: Second Story Press, 2007.

Theodore Too and the Shipwreck School. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2007.

Theodore Too and the Too-Long Nap. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2006.