Carol Kerney is a teacher and writer who lives with her husband Bill in San Diego, California. Having grown up with a mother who was a storyteller and a father with a gentle British humor, she knew from a young age she wanted to write books (often with a touch of the funny or ironic). She can’t remember a time when she didn’t know she was going to be a teacher. Born in Los Angeles County, she spent a lively childhood in the cotton country around Lubbock, then in Lubbock, Texas, graduating with a master’s degree from Texas Tech University. She moved to California to start her career as a teacher, met and married Bill, and had two children, Bill and Kate, all of who gave and continue to give her great joy. Now a grandmother of three, she retired from teaching elementary school, high school, adult education, community college, and university. She is a grant writer and CEO of a small education technology corporation. She wrote through all those busy years, published articles about technology in the classroom, virtual reality, and grantwriting—and with retirement from the San Diego County Office of Education dived into writing those hundreds of novels she had outlined and stored in her computer over all those years. She wrote 24 full-length books in six years—and is still going strong.
Carol Kerney Books fall into five categories:
1. Grades 4-8: novels that teach specific learning content
2. Grades 4-8: mystery, adventure, and fantasy novels
3. Grades 8-12 (young adult): science fiction
4. Adult: inspirational romance
5. Nonfiction: classroom activities in American history
Because she is a teacher, many of Carol Kerney’s books are what she calls “pedagogical fiction,” meaning that while the novel tells a whopping good story, it also teaches specific educational content. For example, the middle school series, The Triplet Adventures, includes instructional content about the ancient world woven into each of the nine novels. The Young Benjamin Franklin, a fictionalized biography series, investigates the fascinating Founding Father’s childhood to figure out what made Dr. Franklin the man that he was. Time Flies sends twins from the planet Burjos back in time to collect pictures of our nation’s founding documents, interprets the documents for the readers, and shows what happens in real time when the colony planet Burjos declares its independence and follows in the footsteps of the American colonies.
Other novels for grades four through eight tell adventure stories, present mysteries as part of the exciting fabric of life, or turn perfectly normal children into dragons to illustrate the ever-present adventures that our lives offer. One novel, “Beating the Jabberwock,” takes a look at a learning disability called Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome that afflicts a fairly large number of people but is not well known in the United States.
Her young adult novels place ordinary teens into a dystopia seventy years in the future where Government controls everything in “On the Bridge to the Stars” or uses weird science to show what girls will do when they learn shocking news about who they really are (the Intrepid Girls series).
Carol Kerney Books makes a commitment to offer novels that look tough circumstances straight in the eye but always keep hope alive and active. Characters know fear, anger, and despair, but they use persistence to carry on and humor to lighten the load. Knowing that kids get plenty of opportunities to hear bad language, the author has committed to avoid curse words (except in one science fiction book where the angry protagonist uses bad words from an alien dialect!) The same thing with steaminess in young adult books…because the author sees plenty of that in today’s young adult books, she has chosen to emphasize relationships and interpersonal growth.
In summary, Carol Kerney loves writing books, a culmination of a lifelong ambition. She hopes readers learn from her books, transport to exciting adventures, look at life itself as an exciting adventure, … and above all, enjoy reading them!
Carol Kerney Books 