About the Author

Rosemary Werrett

Author and Traveler

She Writes Her Characters Around the World

Rosemary Werrett is an international financial journalist who has traveled the world writing about business and politics.  She has always savored the excitement of visiting new places and experiencing different cultures, not to mention listening to and writing about diverse points of view.

After a long career as a business writer, she decided to use her imagination and writing skills in a new way —by creating children’s stories. The pandemic had forced her to put her passport in storage and she found it refreshing to invent characters that could be proxies for the spirit of adventure and travel that characterized her life. Thus Dill, the enterprising squirrel, Will, the Will of Shakespeare, and Toucan Bill, the healing bird from Brazil, were created, forever to become abiding friends in their home in Central Park in New York City.

 Some of her experiences traveling the world are fancifully reimagined in The Uncanny Adventures of Dill, Will and Toucan Bill.  The new book, The Lively Times of Dill, Will & Toucan Bill and Their Irresistible Friends, also takes its cues from the world Rosemary experienced — a world where unlikely friendships are formed and where diversity provides a rich background for creativity.

Rosemary studied international politics in Paris at the Sciences Po and at L’Institute des Hautes Etudes de L’Amerique latin. She followed this year of study with a yearlong hitchhiking journey through the Middle East to India and Afghanistan. She returned to the U.S. and studied for a master’s degree at Berkeley. She married an Englishman and together they spent a year driving from New York City to Brazil and Argentina. These marvelous journeys synthesized the joy of travel and the love of discovering different cultures and other ways of thinking. These journeys became the foundation of her abiding interest in exploring the world and discovering its dazzling array of differences and similarities.

She settled in New York City and became the first woman editor of a prestigious Latin American publication. In the early 1980s together with her business partner she founded Latin American Information Services, which published newsletters and in-depth reports dedicated to keeping the multinational business community up to date on the extraordinary politic and economic changes that were transforming Latin America.  She sold the company in the early 2000s and joined macroeconomic consultancies that took her to beyond Latin America and Europe to Japan, China, Singapore, SaudiArabia and parts of Africa. She continued to write for magazines and newspapers on compelling economic and political issues of the day.

In the mid-1990s she joined on a pro bono basis the microcredit group Pro Mujer, served as Chair of the Board and helped lead the organization as it expanded to provide services to 250,000 low-income women in Latin America. She served as co-Vice President of The World Policy Institute and now sits on the Global Advisory Board of Education for Sharing,

Rosemary looks upon The Lively Times of Dill, Will & Toucan Bill and Their Irresistible Friends as a modern-day fable exemplifying how unlikely friendships can result in boatful projects that nourish the community.

About the Book

The Lively Times of Dill, Will & Toucan Bill and Their Irresistible Friends

The Lively Times of Dill, Will & Toucan Bill and Their Irresistible Friends celebrate the spirit of creativity and of working together.

The Lively Times of Dill. Will & Toucan Bill and Their Irresistible Friends take the reader on a journey of dreaming and doing.  Dill, an enterprising squirrel, Will, who is the Will of Shakespeare, and the happy healing bird Toucan Bill, are full of ideas that create new spaces for their neighbors in Central Park in New York City. Among the neighbors are cheery bears, spirited racoons, curious turtles and the lonesome little boy Fred.

Inspired by a visit to Buckingham Palace to have tea with Mrs. Queen, Dill, Will and Toucan Bill open a restaurant, The Buckingham, in a big elm tree in Central Park. Dill creates whimsical recipes that delight her neighbors. Unfortunately, she lacks a permit for a restaurant, so the authorities force her to close it. The dispirited trio finds a solution; they create picnics, which don’t need a permit. Many people come with so much food that Dill and her pals have mountains of delicious left overs to give to the Food Pantry that serves the local elder community.

Dill yearns to be educated; she opens The People’s Library to have plentiful books to read. Soon the bears and racoons, turtles and little Fred are all reading in the library and outside on its steps. The King of Ranastan in faraway Asia hears of the library’s success and invites Dill, Will and Toucan Bill to help him launch a book boat library to sail around his watery kingdom and bring books to all Its citizens. Their happy visit is cut short when Dilll earns her chestnut tree has been invaded by pushy crows. The threesome rushes to Central Park to chase away the invading crows.

The story has fun and unexpected twists and turns as it takes the reader on an inspirational journey of imagination and resourcefulness. Readers might think of The Livey Times of Dill, Will & Toucan Bill and Their Irresistible Friends as a modern-day fable shining a light on how unlikely friendships can result in beautiful projects that nourish the community.