My Pen Pal, Santa

Melissa Stanton’s debut children’s book, My Pen Pal, Santa, is based on the actual after-Christmas pen pal correspondence between her daughter, Ava, then 6, and Santa Claus. Stanton is a former senior editor at Time Inc., where she was on staff at LIFE and People magazines. While out of the workforce to care for her son and twin daughters, Stanton wrote The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide: Field-tested strategies for staying smart, sane and connected while caring for your kids (Seal Press/Perseus Books 2008), a parenting/self-help book dubbed a “support group in a book” for stay-at-home moms. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Glamour, The Atlantic.com, among other publications and websites. A native of Long Island, New York, Stanton holds degrees from Fordham University and the Hunter College School of Public Health. She now works in Washington, D.C., as a writer and website editor for a non-profit association and lives with her family — and a flock of egg-laying hens — in a rural suburb of Annapolis, Maryland.