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Kalli Dakos is a Canadian children's poet and teacher. She worked as a teacher and reading specialist and now she continues to teach through workshops and school visits. Dakos wrote such books as The Bug in Teacher's Coffee and Other School Poems and The Goof Who Invented Homework.
Kalli Dakos was born on June 16, 1950, in Ottawa. She is a daughter of John Peter and Betty Sperdakos. Kalli Dakos has three sisters.
Kalli Dakos studied at Queen's University where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1972 and a Bachelor of Education Degree in 1973. Then she studied at the University of Nevada where she received a Master of Arts degree.
Kalli Dakos also attended the University of Alberta where she had courses towards her Master of Arts Degree. At Syracuse University she had courses in journalism and writing.
Kalli Dakos started her career by teaching fifth and sixth grades at Sir Alexander Mackenzie Elementary School. She also worked as a teacher at Storrington Public School but in 1976 she began to work as a reporter at Eagle Bulletin. She worked as a reporter for three years and in her spare time, she worked as a teacher at Manlius Pebble Hill School. She left the post of a reporter in 1986 and began to work as a reading teacher at Braddock Elementary School. Besides, she has served as a lecturer and reading specialist at Northern Virginia Community College and worked as a language arts consultant. Now Kalli Dakos visits schools all over the United States and Canada to encourage children to read.
Kalli Dakos fell in love with writing when she was in the sixth grade. When she worked at the University of Nevada at Reno she began to write short stories and articles to children’s magazines. She wrote a lot of stories and tales about school and children. In 1995, Kalli Dakos published her first book If You're Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand: Poems About School, which became a best-seller. She has written many collections of school poems that include five ILA-CBC Children’s Choice Selections. In 2017, she wrote a book about identity and self-acceptance named Why Am I Blue?. Together with Deborah Cholette, Dakos wrote a story of a bookmark named Get Me Out of This Book: Rules and Tools for Being Brave.
Kalli Dakos is known as a children's poet and writer who is famous for her books A Funeral in the Bathroom, Our Principal Promised to Kiss a Pig, If You’re Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand. Her book A Funeral in the Bathroom won an IRA-CBC Children's Choice award in 2012.
(For every student who’s ever worried about spending a lif...)
1995(Thirty-seven miniplays and poems, sporting titles such as...)
1998(Complete with lively full-color illustrations throughout,...)
1999(This humorous story packs a big punch as it introduces ch...)
2019(In September, when the school principal promises to kiss ...)
2004(What really goes on at school! Funny poems and pictures e...)
2002(A collection of poems that reflect the varied, sometimes ...)
1996(Put your eyes up here, put your eyes on me! Ms Roys asks ...)
2006(In this story, the Blue Frog wonders why he is blue, and ...)
2017(My teacher's pretty slick, Has a hundred teaching tricks....)
2011(The members of Ms. Churn's class take turns creating sill...)
1997Kalli Dakos is a member of the International Reading Association, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Virginia State Reading Association and Greater Washington Reading Council.
Kalli Dakos married John Kenton Desmarteau. The marriage produced a daughter.