Marjorie Watkins and I have started visiting schools with the Rotaida books. Rotaida is a fictional character who lived in Charlemage's time, in 800 A.D. Marj (on the left) and I created costumes of the period and dyed them with onion skins and tumeric to imitate as close as possible the dyes that would have been available then.

Marj wrote the books, Rotaida and the Runestone, and Royal Spy, and I illustrated Royal Spy.

The children were engaged and had interesting questions, as we led them back in their imaginations to a time when there were no lights but fire, no grocery stores, cell phones, Ipods, cars, or even bathrooms! One girl thought she couldn't live without her cell phone, but her classmates reminded her that she would be just fine because if she lived back then, she wouldn't even know what a cell phone was! Some of the children thought a dugout was related to baseball, rather than a type of boat, even in the context.