Loretta Halter

Loretta Halter was born in 1957 and raised in Burbank, California. Her parents brought her up with her three brothers and two sisters in an atmosphere of love, support, and with a passion for music and dance. She studied ballet, tap and jazz until junior high. Then she took up modern dance at John Burroughs High. Years later she was able to go back to school and resume her passion for dance at Cabrillo Community College and then at San Jose State. She earned her B.A. in Creative Arts and her teaching credential at San Jose State University. While earning her credential, she took additional courses in biology, poetry, children's literature, and then a special course offered in teaching ecology to children. This particular subject deepened her appreciation for nature so that she felt it imperative to become an environmentally based school teacher.

For the last 25 years she has felt blessed to be a teacher and to connect with over a thousand children and their parents, while integrating the arts, science and ecology into her lessons for 3rd to 8th grade students in the public schools of Franklin McKinley School District in San Jose, California. As a partially retired school teacher she continues to work with children with learning challenges as well as newcomers to our country in that same district.

Inspired by the forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains where she lives with her husband, J. T. Osgood, she enjoys gardening, hiking and writing children's environmental stories. As with her first publication about the importance of our Redwood tree forests, her more recent publication, the first decorator crab book, draws attention to ocean awareness and the need to care for sea life. Revisiting this theme again, she has written and illustrated this sequel to "Lacy's Journey; the Life of a Decorator Crab," and is currently working on a third book for the series.

As with her first two publications, she dedicates 10% of her proceeds from the sales of her book to various environmental organizations.