I was born in Genoa, Italy, and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania. I served eleven years in the United States Air Force, including a tour during Desert Storm. After my military service, life took me through many chapters and through all of them, one thing never changed: my love for the outdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love camping. I love hiking. I love the smell of pine trees on a cool morning and the sound of leaves crunching underfoot in October. I love the way a forest feels like a whole world unto itself full of stories, full of life, full of questions just waiting to be asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That love is what became The Mystery of Hidden Oak Valley<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I sat down to write this book, I didn’t just want to write an adventure story. I wanted to write the book I would have liked as a child, a book that made me feel like the forest was a place I belonged<\/em>, not just a place I walked through. A book that gave me the names<\/em> of things. Because when you know the name of something, you notice it differently. You see it. You care about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also wanted to write a book that a parent and child could read together and then go outside and actually use. When you finish The Mystery of Hidden Oak Valley<\/em>, I want your family to go for a walk and say, “That’s a birch tree! Look at that bark!” I want your child to ask why the marigolds are planted next to the tomatoes. I want them to look at a pine cone and pick it up and hold it, knowing now what it is and where it came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Education and adventure are not opposites. In the best stories, they are the same thing. That’s what I believe. That’s what Hickory believes too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you for reading. Thank you for your curiosity. And thank you for raising children who still look up at the trees and wonder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Franco Tompeterini<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Author & President, Curious Readers LLC.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rogers, Arkansas<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mystery of Hidden Oak Valley is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Books, and other major publishing platforms.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was born in Genoa, Italy, and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania. I served eleven years in the United States <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curiousreadersllc.store\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}