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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Norton Juster
Norton Juster was born in 1929 in Brooklyn, New York, and spent his childhood there. Juster, the son of an architect, went on to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Kathleen Krull
Since she was a young girl, Kathleen Krull has always known that she wanted to be a writer. In the second grade she wrote short stories and poems. At age ten, she wrote a book called "Hair-Do's and People I Know". As a teenager, she...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With e.b. Lewis
Earl Bradley (E.B.) Lewis was born on December 16, 1956, in Philadelphia, PA. Inspired by two uncles who were artists, Lewis began taking art classes while he was still in elementary school and developed a particular interest in...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Grace Lin
Grace Lin grew up in Upstate New York with her parents and two sisters. While the other sisters became scientists, Grace became an artist. After attending the Rhode Island School of Design, Grace began working on children's books. Her...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry was born in the Territory of Hawaii in 1937, but spent much of her childhood in her mother's hometown in Pennsylvania. During World War II, Lois' father served abroad as an army dentist. After the war, the entire family moved...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With David Lubar
David Lubar was born and raised in Morristown, New Jersey. His mother was a school librarian so he spent lots of time at the school library.
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Leonard Marcus
Leonard Marcus is one of the most respected writers and historians of children's literature. His critically acclaimed books have looked at Caldecott winners, the history and impact of Golden Books, fantasy writers, and the lives of other...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Patricia and Fredrick Mc Kissack
Patricia McKissack was born in 1944, in Smyrna, Tennessee. After moving around a bit, when she was 12 she and her family finally settled in Nashville. It was there that Patricia first met the then 17-year-old Fredrick. The two friends...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Sy Montgomery
Sy Montgomery is a lifelong explorer: she has made four trips to Peru and Brazil to study the pink dolphins of the Amazon; and on other expeditions, she was chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire; bitten by a vampire bat in Costa...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in 1933 in Anderson, Indiana, growing up during the Great Depression. Her parents shared theatrical read alouds with Naylor and her siblings every evening, well until her teen years. These shared stories,...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Kadir Nelson
Kadir Nelson is a naturally gifted artist whose extraordinary talent continues to develop and be discovered. Before the age of 30, Nelson had already illustrated children's books, sold paintings to celebrities, and worked on a movie...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Linda Sue Park
Linda Sue Park, Korean American author of children's fiction, has been an avid reader and writer her entire life. In fact, she began poetry and story writing before kindergarten - at the age of four. Growing up outside of Chicago, one...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Katherine Paterson
As the daughter of two missionaries, Katherine Paterson spent the first five years of her life in China. When the Japanese invaded during World War II, her family returned to the United States. By the age of 18, Paterson had moved over...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Rodman Philbrick
Rodman Philbrick was raised in New England - he was born in Boston in 1951 and grew up in a small town on the coast of New Hampshire, where his grandmother rented out cottages to summer visitors.
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Tamora Pierce
Tamora Pierce was born in Fayette County Pennsylvania, in 1954. Her father worked for the telephone company while her mother went to college for her degree in English, intending to become a teacher. Pierce grew up surrounded by books -...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1964. His mom, dad, and grandparents were all teachers. Rick didn't like to read much until he discovered the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Greek and Norse mythology in middle school. In the...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Pam Munoz Ryan
Pam Munoz Ryan was born in Bakersfield, California, in 1951. With half of her family from Mexico and the other half from Oklahoma, Munoz Ryan jokes that she grew up eating enchiladas one weekend and fried chicken the next. She was the...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Brian Selznick
From the time Brian Selznick was a young boy, it was clear that he had a gift for drawing. On his kindergarten report card, Brian's teacher noted that he was a good artist. At school Brian's classmates liked to gather around to see what...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Neal Shusterman
Neal Shusterman was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Though he had lots of interests and aspirations in high school, he credits his ninth-grade English teacher, who challenged him to write a story a month for extra credit, with...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Anita Silvey
Anita Silvey grew up with stories. One of her early memories is listening to her mother read poetry aloud as Silvey washed the dishes; somehow that chore seemed to be more pleasurable than not as she soaked up all that beautiful...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Marilyn Singer
Marilyn Singer was born in New York City and raised on Long Island. She studied English at City University of New York and Communications at New York University.
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Sherri L. Smith
Sherri Smith was born in Chicago and spent her childhood in Staten Island, NY, Washington D.C., and Upstate New York. Her parents divorced when she was twelve, and a year later, she moved back to Chicago with her mother and big brother....
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With r.l. Stine
Robert Lawrence Stine was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1943. Stine was a rather shy and fearful child, but he did have a clever imagination. At the age of nine, Stine began typing up his own short stories and humor magazines such as Tales...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Tanya Lee Stone
Tanya Lee Stone began making up stories when she was a kid. She studied English at Oberlin College and after graduation became a children's book editor in New York City. When Stone moved to Vermont and got her chance to write her first...