Barbara is the forerunner of several programs aimed at increasing awareness of the importance of the humanities in the lives of children. In 1999 she formed THE EXAMINED LIFE with a core group of school and university educators to offset decreasing attention to ancient Greek studies in schools and universities across the nation.

She is the author of the children’s novel Theo about an aspiring child puppeteer in Nazi-occupied Greece during World War II, and co- author of A Twilight Struggle on the life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and A Ripple of Hope on the life of Robert Francis Kennedy.

She founded the nation’s first Master of Arts in Children’s Literature at Simmons College (now University), where as director and associate professor, she taught undergraduate and graduate courses. She was a co-founding director of Children’s Literature New England (CLNE) and has served as a judge on such award committees as the Newbery and Caldecott Award, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and the National Book Award.  She has taught children in elementary and secondary schools and published educational curricula in reading and poetry.  

Her reviews and essays on reading, literature, and contemporary society have been published in such books as Innocence and Experience: Essays and Conversations on Children’s Literature and Origins of Story, as well as in Commonweal, The New York Times, The Horn Book Magazine, The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress.  

She holds a Masters in Education degree from Harvard University and a PhD in English and American Literature from Tufts University. After more than 40 years in Cambridge, MA, she recently returned to the Washington, DC area where she was born and raised.