Janice S. C. Petrie

I've been asked why I've written books that range from true crime, to historical fiction, to illustrated children's books. The answer is simple. I've had a personal connection to every story I write:

My grandparents owned the property where the murder occurred in "Perfection To A Fault."

I met a group of 5th graders at the beach who were terrified of a horseshoe crab they'd found, but after teaching them a little about horseshoe crabs, they were no longer afraid. Since I’ve spent many years teaching about coastal marine invertebrates, I thought that if I write "The Bumpy, Lumpy Horseshoe Crab," a fun, rhyming, colorfully illustrated book to teach kids and their parents about one of my favorite sea animals, horseshoe crabs could someday become as beloved as whales are, another sea creature that was feared in the past.

I wrote and illustrated "Did You Make the Hole in the Shell in the Sea?" as a fun way to clear up the mystery of what sea animal makes a perfectly drilled hole in many of the clamshells we find at the beach. Beach goers make necklaces out of the shells, but not many people know what creature drills the hole.

When a lobsterman brought me a gorgeous cyan blue lobster to include in my school programs, an idea of an unusual story came to me. "Something’s Tugging on My Claw!" highlights a little-known defense mechanism that lobsters have, which led to the opportunity to introduce the concept of molting and the regeneration of lost claws in a rhyming and colorfully illustrated story.

Being from a second-generation seafood processing family and having worked in the business for several years myself, I couldn’t resist telling some of the bizarre things that happened in this age-old occupation in "Bay State Skye."