The Reviewer: About Beth Kanell

The word Vermont conjures up its own magic, from snow-covered mountains to the scent of evergreens to apple pie and maple syrup. Beth Kanell adopted Vermont as her home, grafting onto family roots in New England. Here she became a storyteller, as well as guardian of many stories from others. Here she also learned to participate in community at many levels, from contributing a "hot dish" for a church supper to facilitating historic preservation to supporting schools and libraries organizationally.

She is the author of six published books: three adventure travel guides (The Aventure Guides to Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts and Western Connecticut), a book of Vermont poetry (Mudseason at the Castle), and two local histories. Many years of freelance newspaper work (local and state papers to National publications like Yankee, The New York Times and many more) took her onto back roads in all seasons and at all hours. Most recently, her storytelling has focused on teen audiences, and her community commitments have revolved around ensuring that Vermont communities make strong, knowledgable decisions (more). Both of these added impetus to her urge to tell Molly's story in The Darkness Under the Ice, her latest work of Fiction for young adult readers.

Mother of two grown sons, and recently remarried (after many years of single parenting) to a retired college administrator, she is also a professional copyeditor and co-owner with her husband of Kingdom Books, a poetry, fine press and mystery specialty business.

NEW: On the strength of her reviews (readable at http://www.kingdombks.com/reviews.htm) she was recently accepted into the National Book Critics Circle, an organization of only 600 reviewers and book publishing professionals from across the country.