"Cheesie Mack talks just like a real kid."
—Tom H. (fifth grader)
"I couldn't ask for a better compliment."
—Steve Cotler
I am an author and an educator. My Cheesie Mack series is funny, engaging, and stealthily pedagogical. And that’s who I am when I visit schools. In the first 12 months after its 2011 publication by Random House, I took Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything to over 80 schools across the country, encouraging and challenging nearly 13,000 students (grades 3-5) to connect with its 11-year-old narrator.
In an authentically fifth-grade voice, Cheesie brings alive, with curiosity and humor, those anything-is-possible years between the dependency of little kids and the awkwardness and insecurity of adolescents. And there's plenty of totally excellent, school-worthy vocabulary words. Plus laughing. It all starts with Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything. Want to read an excerpt?
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I am a singer/songwriter. Pobba is Steve Cotler, and every tune on the My 'Magination CD tells a story from a child's point of view. My songs are targeted at kids 4-9. They're funny, stimulating, and catchy. They encourage—as the CD's title promises—imagination, visualization, and super-fun participation.
Pobba's songs are picture books for the mind...with lyrics by Steve (I can go anywhere. I can be anyone. I can do anything. My life is so much fun!) and music by Grammy award-winner, brother Doug Cotler. Want to listen?
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"I am an eggman. My name is Steve Cotler. Each week I go out to a ranch in the country and pick up fresh eggs and deliver them in this neighborhood at a price within a penny or two of store prices. Of course, these eggs are much fresher than store eggs because I pick them up and deliver them the same day. This week, as I finish my route—I deliver to Mrs. Jones across the street and Mrs. Brown down the block—I find that I have a few dozen left over. Since I only want to sell the freshest eggs, I'd be happy to offer them to you at half-price. Would you like to try some really fresh eggs?"
This was my pitch. I was 15. Like Cheesie Mack, my life is one adventure after another. Want to know more about them?
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I was a nerd. Now I am an educator. The Summer Science Program found me when I was 16. SSP was one of the USA's positive and extraordinarily successful reactions to Sputnik shock. We were high school juniors—future rocket scientists—sequestered for six weeks and intensely challenged with cosmology, astrophysics, spherical geometry, and the like. In that techno-world decades before iPhones, Internet, and PCs, we were, I suspect, the only teenagers in the world with daily access to a real computer. (See what one looked like in 1960.)
SSP changed my life. Now, over a half-century later, I am on its Board of Trustees, helping to change the lives of today's brightest teenagers. Want to know more about SSP?
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