Gypsie Bird Press
Kitty Donohoe - Children's Author
Kitty grew up outside of Detroit, the oldest girl in a family of eight kids. She’s always been a storyteller ~ partly to keep her younger siblings entertained and partly because she enjoys it! The Donohoe clan didn’t have a TV for many years (horrors!) so they did a LOT of reading. The kids would regularly troop to the local library and take out the most books they were allowed to have at one time.
Some of Kitty’s favorite books back then were “The Borrowers”, all the Ramona stories, “Winnie the Pooh”, the magic books by Edgar Eager, Nancy Drew Mysteries and biographies of famous people. Kitty firmly believes that if you can read you can accomplish pretty much anything ~ the sky is the limit!
She also loved to write her own stories on her grandmother Woody’s old typewriter, that she now keeps on her piano.
Kitty started playing piano when she was six years old and began ‘making up’ her own songs about then, too. She eventually added other instruments like guitar and dulcimers and she has recorded 6 CDs. She wrote the theme song (which became the title of the project) called “It Starts with a Book” for a reading readiness DVD given to young parents by the Michigan Reading Association.
She writes and performs lots of music for adults as well as children, with a particular fondness for Irish~flavored songs. In fact, Kitty leads a musical tour to Ireland every summer!
Kitty is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, Independent Book Publishers Association, the Yellow Room Gang (an Ann Arbor songwriter’s group), Lost Voices (a group that writes songs with at-risk youngsters) and has presented at the Michigan Library Conference, as well as for hundreds of elementary schools and several Young Author’s Conferences.
Kitty has two grown children and (currently) no pets.
To learn more about that side of Kitty go to www.kittydonohoe.com