Tracy Borgmeyer is a mom and engineer writing about inspiring our girls to be curious and confident about science. She is the author of the She Loves Science blog which gives readers simple easy ways to try out science in their kitchens and homes.
During her blogging adventures, Tracy decided that kids need a relatable science girl hero. She wrote the Halley Harper; Science Girl Extraordinaire middle grade chapter book series because Halley is the hero that she wished she had growing up. The first book, Summer Set in Motion (2017), follows quirky science-loving 9 year old Halley Harper as she uses the Laws of Motion to save her friends and her beloved camp Eureka. The second book, The Friendship Experiment (2018), Halley uses chemistry to get her best friend back and from a new mean girl at camp. The third book in the series, Secret Rock Aftershock (2019) takes Halley on a journey to discover how much life and geology can change everything. Tracy is so excited to announce the fourth book Nature Code Breakers (2020) where Halley uses biology and nature to choose between being popular or being true to herself as a science extraordinaire.
Her first non-fiction book She Loves Science: A Mother’s Guide to Nurturing the Curiosity, Confidence, and Creativity of Her Daughter was published in 2016.
Tracy lives with her husband and three kids in Beaumont, TX. She enjoys spending time with her family, writing, reading, and experimenting with recipes in the kitchen. She especially loves being outdoors fishing and hunting around her hometown of Victoria, TX. She also enjoys cheering on her Fighting Texas Aggie football team.
Melanie Cordan is a professional animator and illustrator working and living in the Santa Cruz mountains. In her formative years she learned storytelling from masters of their craft from some of the biggest names in animation at studios like Pixar and Dreamworks.
She worked on a total of 18 movies over the course of her film career as a character animator and some were Oscar and Emmy winning titles. But having her first child in 2005 rekindled her love of picture books and reading, and reminded her how she wanted to tell her own stories through drawing. Her favorite illustrators are quirky and loose with dynamic posing and strong draftsmanship, and this is the style she tries to invoke with her personal work. When describing her own illustration style she likes to joke that her sketches look like Quentin Blake and Bill Peet somehow had a magical child together. But when illustrating for others, she believes that the subject matter and the audience should dictate the style that is appropriate for the work.
About Halley’s world, Melanie says: “I wanted to combine a feeling of Nancy Drew meets Disney. With each cover I’m trying to push myself in my digital painting and invoke a sense of soft wonder, grounded in real world lighting and strong poses that reveal more about Halley each year she goes to camp. I love the world that Tracy has created and I feel every girl needs a role model like Halley to learn about science so they can discover their own love for it.”