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Fall 1999 Flying Starts: Laurie Halse Anderson: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
One night, Laurie Halse Anderson awoke to the sound of a child crying. After checking on her own two children and finding them asleep, she realized that what she had heard was a nightmare in her own head.
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Fall 1999 Flying Starts: Rebecca Bond: A Combination of Talents
I was wrapped up in stories from as far back as I can remember," says Rebecca Bond, author-illustrator of Just Like a Baby (Little, Brown).
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Spring 1999 Flying Starts: Amy Walrod
To hear Amy Walrod tell it, her "flying start" as a children's illustrator has been a long time coming. "I had a difficult couple of years there," says the 1995 Rhode Island School of Design graduate, whose quirky paint-and-paper collages animate James Howe's Horace and Morris but Mostly Dolores (Atheneum, Mar.).
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Spring 1999 Flying Starts: Jennifer Holm
The idea for Jennifer Holm's novel Our Only May Amelia (HarperCollins) emerged from a Christmas present. Six years ago, while unpacking an old suitcase in her grandmother's house, Holm's Aunt Elizabeth found a diary kept by Holm's grand-aunt Alice Amelia Holm when she was a teenager in the early 1900s, living in what is now the state of Washington. Elizabeth typed and circulated the diary as a present to family members a few months later at Christmastime. To Holm's surprise, the diary "wasn't any different from what I would have written when I was that age. It got me thinking what it would be like to grow up as I did with brothers but out in the middle of nowhere in a wilderness at a very exciting time."
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Spring 1999 Flying Starts: Jonathan Frost
Jonathan Frost was in junior high when he made up his mind to be an artist. It wasn't until over two decades later, however, that he turned his hand to children's books, with the publication of Gowanus Dogs (FSG/Foster).
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Spring 1999 Flying Starts: Karen Romano Young
Like the illustrious vehicle in Karen Romano Young's fresh and funny novel, the framework for The Beetle and Me (Greenwillow) had been around for awhile and just needed some tuning up. While in high school, Young had written and illustrated a picture book called The Blue Volkswagen, starring a boy named Daniel and his father, who traveled to another planet littered with broken down cars that needed fixing. The father-son pair will sound familiar to those who've read The Beetle and Me. The titular VW's color may have changed from blue to purple, the setting may be on this planet, and Daniel and his father may have moved from leading to supporting roles, but the author's love of the vintage Beetle remains constant.
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Spring 1999 Flying Starts: David Almond
When David Almond's novel Skellig (Delacorte, May) appeared last year in the author's native England, his publisher, Hodder Children's Books, had to go back to press after only four days. And when Skellig won the Whitbread Award, it looked like an overnight sensation--but Almond's success as a novelist was almost 20 years in the making.
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PW: Peggy Rathmann: Opening Doors with Pictures
On a hilltop in Presidio Heights, a tranquil neighborhood far removed from the hustle and bustle of downtown San Francisco, picture book artist Peggy Rathmann lives and works in a townhouse filled with skylights.
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Spring 1997 Flying Starts: Giselle Potter
The many fantastic elements in Giselle Potter's illustrations, and their far-flung settings, may owe a debt to her unconventional childhood.
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Spring 1997 Flying Starts: Edward Bloor
Set in Tangerine County, Fla., Edward Bloor’s surreal first novel combines sports action with psychological suspense.
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Beyond the Book: Corey Ann Haydu's Zoomi and Zoe Series
The critically acclaimed children's author dishes on her new early reader series, Zoomi and Zoe (Quirk Books), which follows a monster and her imaginary human friend. (Sponsored)
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BookCon 2015: YA Authors Talk Friendship, Growing Up
BookCon panel BFFs Forever gathered YA authors Gayle Forman, Sarah Dessen, and Jenny Han to talk about friendships past and present, and the art of writing about them.
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