About Us

Our partnership began on a dark and foggy night. No kidding! I had a passion for writing children’s books. But I was making a living in marketing. In fact I’d just gone to my car to get marketing material to review at an after-dinner business meeting with an ilustrator I was hiring for a product package.

It was so foggy I couldn’t see my car or the parking lot. But I heard a car door slam. The new illustrator had arrived. This must be him, I thought, although I couldn’t see his car for the fog.

Then out of the fog stepped Fran Panza.

Fran Panza and I worked professionally on a bunch of projects. Fran is a talented professional illustrator who can illustrate people, machines, technical devices, medical illustrations - you name it. He’s also a vastly gifted painter whose work has been hung in the Carnegie Museum. Read his profile for more!

But to my special delight, that night I learned that Fran wass a genius at creating memorable characters with hand and pencil and then bringing them to life through color rendering on the computer.

So from that meeting on that foggy night in March 1995 we’ve wandered on our dream path….creating chapter books that kids love to read as we’ve each raised our families. My wife and I homeschooled and raised our 3 kids. Fran and his wife raised their daughter. Along the way we’ve gotten feedback from our own kids and the children of friends, and friends of friends which have made the books better in countless ways.

We’ve created chapter books for kids that make it easy for kids to read whether they are beginning readers, enthusiastic readers, struggling readers or reluctant readers. 

In the ensuing years, Cat’s Claw, Spear Point, and Cave In, Zombo Mice, The Big Jump, and Jail Mice have been written and illustrated. We’re just getting started. The DaVinchy Chapter Book Series will have 52 books by the time we’re done. That will give your child one book a week for one solid year – a great reading foundation.

Books 7-10 in the DaVinchy Chapter Book Series are in the planning stage…with many more to follow.