Cheryl D. Clay is a veteran educator who has taught at the preschool, elementary and college levels in Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Durango, Colorado.  In her professional career she wrote journal articles and books and presented at numerous conferences and training events for early childhood and elementary staff. 

The author grew up on her family’s farm in Highland Township, near Newton, Kansas, the same township where Carl and Anna Barbara Schiedt Tangeman and William and Margaret Schiedt Tangeman moved their families to the Kansas prairie around 1880.  She writes from an intimate understanding of the Tangeman family as a granddaughter of Anna Tangeman Dudte. 

Cheryl and her husband live on the Pine River along side the abundant wildlife who habitat the river environment near Bayfield, Colorado.