Infectious enthusiasm is my superpower.

I'm Melissa Wiley, a children’s book author living in Portland, Oregon. I write about the ways my family and I engage with all kinds of creative practice. This means posts about books (reading them and writing them), art, handstitching, backyard habitat development, film club, music, tidal homeschooling, and the apps and systems I use to enable all this juicy exploration to happen.

Let’s love the world together!

My actual studio is crammed so full of books and art supplies and project tables that you might have to sit on the floor. But this Substack is wide open. We have all the space we need. We’ll get cozy, we’ll get creative, we’ll make connections.

Show-and-tell is my love language

This space is my catalog of enthusiasms—the digital equivalent of the books and links and apps and art supplies and conversation topics I would be dying to gab about with you if we were hanging out in person. 


Who I am

I'm the author of more than a dozen books for kids, including The Nerviest Girl in the World, The Prairie Thief, Fox and Crow Are Not Friends, and many others. I also write literature guides about middle-grade novels for Brave Writer and am co-host of the Brave Writer Podcast with Julie Bogart.

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Juicy explorations of the reading-thinking-stitching life from the author of THE NERVIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, FOX AND CROW ARE NOT FRIENDS, and other books.

People

Author of THE NERVIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, THE PRAIRIE THIEF, FOX AND CROW ARE NOT FRIENDS, INCH & ROLY & other books for kids. Cohost of The Brave Writer Podcast. Obsessive stitcher. Tidal learner. Infectious enthusiasm is my superpower.