A children’s writer and former educator, Ann Mills has been helping children enjoy learning for more than 25 years. Before she made Newspaper Fun a popular coast-to-coast newspaper feature, Ann was best known for her award-winning Wee Dolphin children's activity page, which for a decade educated and entertained children in a largely military community in Connecticut.

In 2006, Ann launched the first national reading club web site, with the purpose of providing ideas and tools for the creation of reading clubs across America. The site, ReadingClubFun.com, helps parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians and home-schoolers organize exciting incentives, activities and awards to encourage kids to become more avid readers.

While the reading club is open to anyone, it is particularly focused at communities where Newspaper Fun reaches readers each week through local newspapers. Ann believes that children who develop broad reading tastes – from newspapers to web sites, comic books to recipes – become more inquisitive and intelligent adults. As such, children who complete a Newspaper Fun puzzle in a local newspaper might look on ReadingClubFun.com for puzzle answers, then find themselves exploring new books of interest or hunting down instructions for making modeling clay.

In addition to creating the activity page every week, and running ReadingClubFun.com, Ann has written several manuscripts for children's books. She strengthens her knowledge of writing and children's literature through participation in the national Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and the Connecticut Authors & Publishers Association (CAPA).

Ann holds both a bachelor's and a master's degree in Education from Westfield State College, with a special emphasis on elementary and middle-grade education. She works from a studio in Connecticut with her husband, Ernie, and their lively Shiba-Inu, Yoshi (whose adventures play a starring role on ReadingClubFun.com).

Ann promotes reading in other ways. Find out how.