Up, Up Away to Mars

Dipa Bhattacharyya is a long time resident of the beautiful Green Mountain state of Vermont. As a child in India, Dipa enjoyed the outdoors, especially climbing guava trees to pick, smell, and eat ripe fruit. The scent and taste of fresh guavas, jackfruits, mangos, and papayas are deeply ingrained in her memory. As a nutritionist and children's health and literacy advocate, she views childhood as a time for exploration, imagination, learning, and play, on a daily "diet" rich in fresh air, fruits and vegetables, and childhood "monkey business." Dipa earned her M.S in Home Economics from the University of Vermont and was inducted into Omicron Nu National Honor Society for Home Economics. She is still associated with UVM as a member of the ISSA (Indian Subcontinent Student Association). In addition to raising two children and homemaking, she enjoyed working for the Burlington Free Press and then for the Pine Ridge School in Williston, Vermont as a math and science teacher for students with learning differences. Her passions are to serve others, walk everyday snow, rain or shine, especially through Vermont mountain trails and woods in the summer months, write poems especially in Bengali, sing, knit, crochet, and paint.This is her very first book written for children.