Layne, Marty: - "I was born in Den Haag, Netherlands. My family immigrated to the USA in 1956. I started third grade a few weeks after we arrived in the States. I knew very little English - I could count to 100 and could say and understand the word street.I wish I could remember how I learned to read in English. All I know is that within a few months, I was taking books out of the town library to read. I began to read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The third grade class I was placed in was making butter as part of the activities related to the book. I thought this was fun. Years later I lived on a 40 acre farm in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada and milked goats, made cheese, and trained a work horse to work in harness. Those Little House books had a great influence on me.Before writing my book about learning at home, I was a La Leche League Leader for many years, helping mothers breastfeed their babies. After writing and publishing my book and as my children reached their late teen, early twenty years, I became an infant massage instructor and taught new parents how to massage their babies just as I had massaged my own babies years before. The baby massage classes showed me that there was a need in my community (Victoria, BC) for a program of songs and fingerplays for parents and their babies, so I developed and taught one. It was a delight to meet mothers who had been in my classes at the grocery store who remembered me from those classes and introduced me to teenage children who had been in my baby classes. All the rhymes I taught those parents wee a fun resource when I began to have grandchildren."