Butler, a native of the country, said nobody had told her that she was being honored for a book that she had co-written. It wasn't until her friend and co-author, Jan Turbill, showed up in America with a large package that Butler found out about the award.

"I'd been invited to this ceremony but I didn't even know why," Butler said, shrugging. "And I was here."

The Australian Primary English Teaching Association had given Butler and Turbill the Walshe Award for writing "the book that had the most influence on English teaching in the 1980s and beyond," Butler said.

That book, Towards a Reading/Writing Classroom, examines the integration of reading and writing in classroom instruction. Written in the early 1980s, Butler said, "It was a groundbreaking book. At the time, we used to teach reading quite separate from writing. We never brought the two together."

The book was later published by an America publisher and is still used as a resource for teachers today.

Bridget Solve, literacy support specialist for the district, says Butler told her that she and Turbill had opted to receive a flat payment for the book instead of receiving royalties because they had not expected the book to do as well as it has.

And Butler moved on from writing, working for a publishing company in the United States and starting her own consulting business. "Meanwhile, the book that Jan and I wrote kept selling," she said. "We were like, 'Isn't this amazing?' "

Now she is finishing up her second year with the Los Gatos district, spending one day each week with students K­2 and the other days working with staff to develop reading assessment standards and a teaching curriculum.

The former teacher had worked in various districts around the country when she decided to settle in the Bay Area. She looked for a school district that "stuck with a meaning-based approach" to literacy—"You can make sense of meaning, not just make noise with words," Butler said.

"We were going in that direction and then Andrea came along and we said, 'Oh, this is a good match,' " said Suzanne Boxer-Gassman, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. "I was quite pleased when she was interested in the job. Lots of teachers can teach, but being able to write it—that is a whole other skill."

Los Gatos "is a small district with a sense of community and is family-oriented," Butler said. "This is a very warm place to work." Also, "I think the leadership in this district is very strong. That's why I came," she added.

Boxer-Gassman hired Butler in 2001 and says the literacy consultant has been a team player as well as an expert in coming up with ideas and bringing them to fruition. "She's phenomenally bright and very capable," Boxer-Gassman said. "It's just wonderful that we have this kind of resource to help new teachers with."

Plus, Boxer-Gassman added, "she has a great sense of humor, and she makes working together fun."

According to Solve, Butler easily integrates her professional experience into her time with children. "She's very nurturing. Since she's so knowledgeable, she's able to pinpoint what a kid needs at that moment in time," Solve said. "I love working with her."

"I'd always intended to be a teacher," Butler said. For a decade, she taught third, fourth and fifth grade, during that time noticing that her students struggled in literacy. "I just felt so woefully inadequate," Butler said.

"I love seeing the light in the kids' eyes when they know that they're learning and they're progressing," Butler said.

The kids she works with are those with reading or writing disabilities, not learning disabilities—"They're quirky but it doesn't mean they're not bright."

Butler herself is in love with literacy, spending much of her free time reading either "realistic fiction" or professional publications. She and her husband of 5¹/2 years—set up by her matchmaking hairdresser—live in Cupertino.

This summer she will travel to an Indian reservation in South Dakota to teach—what else?—reading and writing. "We want to emphasize the reading and reading and reading and reading," Butler said.