Storyboarding with Norma Jean (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781985025981)

N.J. Bennett grew up on a large grain farm, in a large family, and had an even larger imagination. Nature and the abundance that it provides for creative play is a recurring theme in the Norma Jean Mystery series. Abandoned homesteads, tree forts, dugouts, grain fields, garbage dumps, ditches, haylofts, a turn-of-the-century farm home, a cabin at the lake, a community school house, are all places a farm kid plays and discovers mystery. As a first generation Canadian, the author is dedicated to writing and preserving a history of the family farm in the 1960's. Weaving farm life and immigrant stories together into Middle Grade mysteries, N.J. Bennett teaches through story. Written into all the books is the use of a Clue Notebook. The two protagonists, Norma Jean and Howard, write their observations as each mystery unfolds, using words as equations to cipher out the solutions. Once a farm kid, always a farm kid. N.J. Bennett is still a farm kid at heart. She is married to Roy (who at one point in his life lived in a teepee in the mountains) and they have two grown daughters. Norma Jean now resides in Southern California, where she and her husband have built a fort in their backyard. They sleep out, year round, under the stars.