Mrs. McKinney

About Mrs. McKinney

After graduating from college with an education degree, I taught high school Social Studies and English. Wanting to help people and see the world, I took a couple years off to volunteer in the Peace Corps and was assigned to Jamaica to educate them about the environment. When I came home, I knew I loved working with students and loved reading. I combined the two to become a librarian by earning a Masters degree in Library & Information Science from the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. I’ve worked in libraries with students in all grades from Kindergarten through High School. I get excited about great new books and enjoy discussing them with students.

In my personal life, I’m married to a man whose mission in life is to make me laugh every day. We have an intelligent & mischievous dog named Oberon, a dim but loving dog named Tyrion,  a neurotic cat named Griffin, a cat named Sagan  that loves to play jokes on us, three chickens, and approximately 10,000 honey bees (though I haven’t counted). We dream of moving to some land in the country so we can have some goats or an alpaca. My husband works in a library as well. We argue over who gets to fill up the book shelves at home. When we aren’t reading, gardening, cooking, listening to music, or playing with the pets, we are playing jokes on our nine nieces and nephews. We have convinced them that there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln with his pet monkey, Bobo,  in Springfield, Illinois. As part of the “monkey wars,” we ship them monkey items to get points. We gave them Anti-Monkey Butt powder. They retaliated with a superhero cap with a monkey on it. Currently my husband & I are up on points in the monkey wars.