As a primary education professional who began in the field in 1988 and spent 33 years educating, guiding and motivating hundreds of children, Karen recently retired from full-time teaching. She has decided to direct her passion and energy by beginning a new adventure based on her experience and years of wisdom educating young children. As part of her wealth of experience, she taught fourth grade for 25 years and then kindergarten for eight more years. During that first segment of her career, she worked with improving children's reading skills and comprehension. Then moving onto teaching kindergarten, she was immersed in developing and teaching emergent reading and writing instruction. Karen found it incredibly inspiring to teach those youngest learners to become readers and writers. Once they learned to read and write, hence communicate, an entire new world was presented to them. Being in kindergarten, Karen integrated a strong connection between reading and writing. She feels it is crucial to develop both of those skills simultaneously. She also connected literature with writing experiences. Children need to build strong linkages between reading and being able to write in conjunction with reading is crucial. Dana Regan has illustrated more than 85 books for a variety of publishers, including Scholastic, Random House, Penguin, Grosset & Dunlap, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. She has enjoyed creating many Hidden Picture Puzzles for High Five and Highlights Magazine and recently illustrated a story about the solar eclipse for Click Magazine.