Welcome to my Blog! I’m very excited to have you on board! Central Park Story is a young adult adventure series whose main character is a sixteen-year-old boy named Christopher Middleton. It’s also a treasure hunt/romance/historical adventure/fantasy/humorous tale all rolled into one! I put a lot of time researching the backdrop to the series which […]
I might also have asked, ‘And who thought this crazy creature up in the first place?’ (see photo to the right) According to the dictionary, a cockatrice is a dragon with the head of a rooster, the body of a snake, and the wings of a bat–or as Christopher in Central Park Story said when […]
Okay. I admit it. I used to be a birder just like Jennifer in Central Park Story Book One. I was so into birding that, by the age of 13, I had a huge (by my standards) library of bird books, several pair of binoculars, and a camera attached to my 80-power telescope so I […]
The pond in front of Belvedere Castle was once part of a much larger body of water called the Croton Reservoir. If you look in the upper left hand corner of the photo, you will see several baseball diamonds which is as far as the original reservoir extended. Even this wasn’t enough to quench the […]
For those of you who’ve never been inside a real castle, Belvedere Castle is a treat. It’s not a real castle, per se, but rather what was called a ‘folly’ in the Victorian era. Follies were meant to resemble the real deal but were usually scaled down and made to look mysterious. Their purpose was to […]
In case you thought I made it up when I have Christopher stop to observe a mounted policeman heading under a bridge in Central Park, here’s a picture to show that they do exist. In fact, they’ve been a part of the police force in Central Park since its beginning. Imagine one of these troopers […]
In Central Park Story Book One, Christopher Middleton mentions a tribe in Africa called the Matabele who choose not to walk in straight lines because they consider straight lines evil. The tribe he’s referring to is pictured in the photo to the right, and the book he mentions is Sir Lauren Van der Post’s stunning […]
Below is a brief, two minute video on the history of Central Park. In Central Park Story Book One, the main character, Christopher Middleton, has an uncanny ability to see into the past history of the park, and I thought this might help you to imagine what he sees: Link to this post!
I can’t write a blog on Central Park that follows my young adult adventure series, Central Park Story, without first appreciating what an amazing job the Central Park Conservancy has done in restoring this historic landmark. Founded in 1980 as a privately run organization working hand in hand with the city administration, the Conservancy has […]
The dark and musty old building that Christopher discovers when he first enters the doors of Central Park School is exactly what I recall when I first entered the darkened doorway to Collegiate that you see to the right. Though Collegiate was my principal inspiration for Central Park Story, I couldn’t help but include […]
When I started brainstorming Central Park Story, I wanted to place Christopher’s fictitious school close to Central Park but as far away from any existing school as possible so there wouldn’t be any confusion between the two. Then I remembered how, as a student myself, I used to take the crosstown bus at 79th and […]
