It all started with a novel called Remember Wake. Teresa was working for a PBS series and was sent out to interview a man named Clint Haakonstad to see if he should be featured in the series. Teresa was so moved and inspired by Clint's story of survival first in the Battle of Wake Island and then during four years internment in Japanese prison camps in Japan and China, that she decided to write a novel based on his story. And in that novel, she set out to do something no one had done before, to tell what happened to the women left alone on the homefront when the men were taken prisoner. The book was a labor of love that took ten years to complete and publish.

While researching Remember Wake, Teresa became interested in learning more about daily life for women in the World War II era. Not statistics about how many women entered the workforce or how many served in the military, but real stories of what it FELT like to be a woman during the single greatest event in world history. Dancing in Combat Boots: and Other Stories of American Women in WWII tells eleven fictional stories based on real women that Teresa interviewed. It is now her most popular book.

To read more about Dancing in Combat Boots and Remember Wake, click on their individual pages.

After completing her two book for adults, Teresa began to receive invitations to speak to schoolchildren about writing and World War II. She very quickly realized that most elementary children today know nothing about that time period. Most had never even heard of Adolph Hitler or Pearl Harbor! But when Teresa spoke to them about the war, students sometimes opted to skip their recess to hear more. It was the children who suggested that Teresa write some stories for them, and she was happy to comply.

The Home-Front Heroes series will feature six characters in six books. The characters will represent different cultural groups in our country so readers can learn how the war was experienced in our diverse nation. Like all of Teresa's books, the Home-Front Heroes novels are loosely based on interviews with real people who serve as models for the characters. The first book, Doing My Part, deals with a young girl working in a war factory. The second, The No-No Boys, tells the story of Japanese-American internment. The newest book, V for Victory, features a Mexican-American boy helping in the family store in San Antonio. The fourth Home-Front Heroes book is due out in the fall of 2010.

Teresa is now distributing these books free to teachers through her Do Your Part School Kit program. You'll find information about the program on the Teachers page.

To learn more about the Home-Front Hero books, visit their book pages.