When I was growing up, I never thought I’d wind up being a writer. I thought only people who write stories become writers. And I didn’t write stories. But I was always writing something. I wrote letters to TV shows and toy companies. I wrote and illustrated my own comics. I kept a journal. At camp, I’d write skits and parodies of songs. When I was twelve, I pitched ideas to my favorite TV show, the Mary Tyler Moore show. Of course, all my ideas involved a girl my age, as I was determined to quit my miserable middle school existence and land a steady role on the sitcom before the end of algebra. As it happens, this did not happen. But for two years, the show’s producer and I corresponded. I spent hours composing my letters to him, and it was thrilling to think of them traveling to an exciting, faraway place called, Studio City. Surely, there was no gym class there.
Although I never found my way onto a sitcom, I did find some small adventures outside of school. Growing up in New Rochelle, NY was great because I could easily take the train into NYC. There, I would wander art museums like Claudia and Jamie from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, or study people in coffee shops like Harriet the Spy, or prowl the lobby of the Plaza hotel like Eloise.
Books were always a big part of my life. When I was very young, I loved the thick, creamy paper of the Beatrix Potter books I borrowed from the library. Those pages smelled so good, I couldn’t resist taking a lick to know if they tasted good, too! When I was older, my father subscribed to a set of children’s classics off the back of a can of ham. My favorite was a book of moral tales written in 1845 by Heinrich Hoffman called, Struwwelpeter, which translates as “shock-headed” Peter. Each story relates the often gruesome consequences that befall children who play with fire, suck their thumb, or refuse to comb their hair, etc. I was fascinated by the exaggerated situations and shockingly humorous illustrations. None of the other books I’d ever read showed a drawing of a boy with his thumbs snipped off and dripping blood! It was slapstick in words and pictures, and I think the book has always stayed with me because of how it dared to trust its young audience.
After college in NYC, I moved to Massachusetts, married, and worked in children’s book publishing, as a children’s book reviewer, and as an illustrator for an educational publisher. While raising my two daughters, I decided to try writing my own books. I wrote a middle-grade novel, and then a picture book. In 2007, I received my MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
When I’m not writing, I work part-time in the youth services department of a local library, and walk our wheaten terrier, Chloe. I walk Chloe a lot.
