Annie Barber writes from Washington, D.C., where she lives with her husband and two red-haired daughters, the inspiration for The Thin Places. A former integrated marketing executive at Time Inc., she traded media boardrooms for bedtime stories when her daughters were small. She believes story is the oldest and most generous form of teaching, and that the right book, met at the right age, can do quietly what no lecture ever can. She writes the kind of fantasy she wished had been waiting on her own daughters' shelves: rich with wonder, rooted in real places, and written for every child who has ever been told they feel too much.