The Story Behind the Stories

About Dino Hero Learning Co.

I made these books to give children a voice, and a safe space to be heard and think. Because I am, and was once, that child. I grew up finding my way through hard things without anyone sitting down to help me name what I was feeling. The stepdaughter of two soldiers, I grew up moving — Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and beyond — which meant I learned early how it feels to be the new child in the room, uncertain whether you belong.

That experience never left me. It followed me into 30 years of work in early childhood classrooms, social services, licensed foster care, and at-risk family support — where I watched children carry weights far too heavy for small shoulders, and sat with them in the late night hours when the heavy things finally found words. I built Dino Hero Learning Co. because every child deserves that circle. Rex, Luna, and Splash aren't just characters.

They're the conversations I wish someone had started sooner — about grief, isolation, kindness, friendship, and what it really means to be brave on a hard day. Rex — the brave Dino Hero who shows us it's okay to have hard days — was born from a quiet little girl who used to walk alone into the Georgia woods to think, because the world didn't always make space for what she was feeling. I'm still that child sometimes.

Still learning. Still growing. I just have a cape now — and two grandsons at home who remind me every single day why this work matters. These books were developed from the inside of real experience. Not from a textbook. From a life spent inside the same communities, the same classrooms, and sometimes the same heartaches as the children and families I served.