My Brother Is My Best Friend by Nicole Weaver

Alas, he sent the cook to collect it for soup, but she wrote a picture book with a happier ending about a little girl who rescued a turtle - “Marie and the Sea Turtle.”

She remembered being out collecting sea shells and finding a sea turtle stranded upside down on the beach near her Haitian home, and calling on her dad to help her get it back into the sea. “Write about what you know,” that speaker advised, planting a seed. When her first, a daughter, left for Pepperdine University in California, Weaver became seriously depressed and a helpful friend took her to a meeting of children’s book authors and illustrators for a presentation on writing picture books. Their first child was born and they moved to Littleton in 1989 - “I have been here since.” Her children are now 25, 23 and 17. The next move was to Texas for five years, where she met her husband, a native Coloradan of German ancestry. “I realized my passion for teaching and helping students and went to graduate school at Bank Street College of Education,” she said. She hoped for a job as United Nations translator when she graduated and got a community-college job teaching French and Spanish while she prepared for the necessary exam. While in college, she spent a semester in France, living with a family in Alsace-Lorraine.

They helped her learn English as she enjoyed the pictures and story content. She speaks about the joy she found in the “Curious George” books, which her New York teacher read to the class. She has taught French and Spanish in Denver Public Schools for 22 years - now at South High School. Writer, teacher, poet - Nicole Weaver of Centennial was born in Haiti, the youngest of six, where her language was French moved to New York at age 10 with her family, where she quickly learned English won a full-ride college scholarship and eventually became a teacher.

My Brother Is My Best Friend by Nicole Weaver