[caption id="attachment_721" align="aligncenter" width="412"] Courtesy of PhotoPin/Flickr[/caption] Reading is a skill that every parent knows is essential for their child to thrive in the modern world. Gaining your children exposed to reading helps foster brain development, language development, and more at a critical time in their development. The skills...
[caption id="attachment_716" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Eleanor Roosevelt & My Grandmother[/caption] I was very nearly six when Eleanor Roosevelt came and stayed the night with us, at my grandmother’s where my mother and I lived. Our house was right next to a big army camp in Greensboro, NC. My grandmother was an...
People often ask me about the writing life, what's my process when writing a new Night Buddies adventure story. The main thing for me is scheduling and dedication. I make a schedule and stick to it no matter what happens or how rotten I may...
This is Crosley’s little whatchamacallit card that not only identifies him as a member of Night Buddies Amalgamated, but works just the same as money. Since the Night Buddies’ mission is to “help out” situations in the borough, people everywhere give them free goods and services when they’re out on...
My six-year-old son John invented the red crocodile named Crosley, and I had to explain why Crosley was red. You can’t just drop a red croc into a story without explaining, right? So it was something I had to figure out before I could start writing the Night Buddies adventures. At some...
Ol' Sands has created the whole Night Buddies world for us, and now it's your turn! When you fill out the missing words in this Mad Lib, you'll have created the first section of your very own Night Buddies stories. Let's get started! Last night, John could not (verb) a wink....
One of the most common fears among people, both kids and adults, is being afraid of the dark. Not all of us have a big, friendly Crosley visiting us when night comes! Sometimes we’re afraid of being alone at night, and sometimes we are afraid of the possible unseen threats...
Crosley’s brother Crenwinkle is not only a genius who runs the Night Buddies Headquarters, he’s also a top-notch juggler! Crenwinkle draws huge crowds for his juggling performances, and he can juggle just about anything he wants, including seven fat, triple-decker sandwiches! If you’re looking to pick up a new hobby,...
I started as a Harry Potter film franchise fan. From the beginning, I always saw the movies exactly one week after they came out (needed to wait for the big crowds to thin), and I couldn’t get enough. They were full of such high excitement, fine acting, Highlands scenery, and...
In Night Buddies, Impostors, and One Far-Out Flying Machine, Crosley introduces John to his favorite flavor of frozen yogurt, the Crusted Crème Fro-Madge. Cros can slurp his Fro-Madges in one gulp, and when he doesn’t eat them they’re great to use for attacking the Iguana Gang! Whether you’re in need...
I'll bet you've never heard of my favorite ghost story. It's called "Shottle Bop" by Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding Science Fiction, 1940). The central character is a ne'er-do-well, not altogether bad guy, who is down on his luck. He comes across a dusty little bottle shop in lower Manhattan and goes...
As you read in our first blog post, the world of Night Buddies started out as original bedtime stories shared between father and son and then turned into the 5-time-award winning children’s book series that it is today. In this blog we will talk about some ways you can create bedtime...
Pictured above is author Sands Hetherington and his now grown-up son, John, in Brussels. The delightful world of Night Buddies first began as a bedtime tradition of storytelling between father and son. Sands and 7-year-old John had always done bedtime stories, but one night John presented his dad with a red crocodile...