J.M. Kelly has been a middle school teacher, a vice-principal, a principal, a Co-Director of the New Jersey State History Fair, a consultant for the New Jersey Foundation for Educational Administration, a current Board member of the Global Learning Project (a non-profit) and Past-President of the Morris County Association of Elementary and Middle School Administrators. He has been the recipient of numerous education awards such as the New Jersey Governor's Teacher Award, two Geraldine Dodge Foundation Grants, and by acclamation of his school staff, received the New Jersey Principal's and Supervisor's Association Principal of the Year Award for Visionary Leadership in 2007. He has authored two professional books: Student-Centered Teaching for Increased Participation and In Search of Leadership. The Lost Treasure is his first novel. His love of mysteries, adventures and everything about Sherlock Holmes, helped in the creation of Bobby Holmes and his cousin Brenda Watson. Monster on the Moors involves the same characters in a pulse-pounding thriller that takes place in the North York Moors of England. Tommy Ails: Good For What Ails You, is a humorous off-beat mystery, and his first novel for adults. Jim's non-fiction book, In Search of Leadership, or Sailing With Roland takes him to the Maine coast and aboard the sailing craft of one of the most preeminent educators of our time, Roland Barth, to discuss educational leadership in particular and the field of education in general. The results are, what Roland in the Foreword calls, timeless nuggets of wisdom for himself and for the rest of us who would venture aboard a boat and into a schoolhouse. Jim divides his time between Sea Girt, New Jersey and Sarasota, Florida, with his wife Bronwen. They have three children.
