About the Author: Esther Bender

Esther Bender, M.Ed. is a writer and former teacher living in southwestern Pennsylvania, "at the top of the Appalachian Mountains" as she says in The Crooked Tree.

A graduate of Frostburg State University, Esther received departmental honors in Early Childhood Education, then earned a masters degree in elementary education with certification as a reading specialist. She took graduate courses in children's literature, fiction writing, and children's book writing, and is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She has published more than a hundred short stories, photographs, and articles, nine books, and seven study guides (five of reading materials for Johns Hopkins University).

Many of Esther's stories are about history or nature. Esther says her awareness of her family in history is a process that continues to this day. The themes of her books, especially the Lemon Tree Series, arise out of her fascination with the stories and mental snapshots from her family's past." For instance, the greenhouses, the windmill, the big and little houses, and the flower gardens in the Katie book were modeled after those on her grandfather's homestead. The fictional lemon tree grew out of a real lemon tree grown by Esther's great-grandmother in the greenhouses. The triplet babies in the Virginia book, the redemptioner in the Elisabeth book, — all were borrowed by Esther's imagination from the realia of the past.

Esther taught in public schools for twenty-three years. In 1976, Esther discovered she had Parkinson disease. When she was unable to function as a "normal" person, she began to study writing intensively, determined that she would have a hobby to keep her occupied and productive in spite of the challenge. Parkinson's was one of the diseases she writes about in her book, A Cry from the Clay. The writing of that book took her into photography, poetry, and layout and design.

Two of Esther's books, Katie and the Lemon Tree and A Cry from the Clay have won the Silver Angel Award from an organization called Excellence in Media, while two more, April Bluebird and Virginia and the Tiny One have won Merit Angel Awards from the same organization. Excellence in Media, the parent organization was founded to honor those creative people in motion pictures, television, radio, books, albums, or other media whose works are of high moral, spiritual, or social impact.