The Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb is proud to announce that Corbin Lichtinger, teacher of first and second grades, is receiving recognition as an artist and storyteller. His Alligators Anthology has been purchased by Holiday House/Neal Porter Books and will be published in the fall of 2027. 

Lichtinger created the initial draft featuring the summertime adventures of senior citizen alligators Geraldine and Alfonso two years ago. His group of CTL students—now in third and fourth grades—had a front row seat during the process and contributed advice about the story and enthusiasm for the characters. 

Working with his editor, Taylor Norman, Corbin developed the initial picture book into a four-season anthology of stories about friendship and the characters’ adventures together over the course of a year. 

Norman describes the book’s “idiosyncratic and wry and precise language” as a humorous feature that drew her into the world. She also compliments Corbin’s “intuition about the intricacies of friendship,” a quality CTL families are familiar with from his work in the 1-2 classroom. 

A resident of Wiscasset, Lichtinger joined the CTL faculty in 2023. Prior to joining the CTL community, he taught first and second grade for seven years in Portland, Oregon. Lichtinger has a BA in political science and environmental studies from Allegheny College and his master of arts in teaching from Lewis and Clark College. 

Holiday House began in 1935 as the first American publishing house founded with the purpose of publishing only children’s books. The creators and books published by Neal Porter’s imprint there have achieved institutional and commercial success, including winning the Caldecott, Pura Belpré, Sibert, and Orbis Pictus awards as well as Newbery and Geisel Honors and hitting the New York Times bestseller list. 

To learn more about CTL, please visit our website at www.c-t-l.org, or contact CTL’s Head of School, Katy Inman, at katy@c-t-l.org.