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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Laurie Halse Anderson
Laurie Halse (rhymes with "waltz") Anderson got to know and appreciate cold weather growing up in upstate New York. She attended elementary school in Syracuse, where she was terrified that she'd never be able to learn how to read. With...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With m.t. Anderson
M. T. Anderson writes: "People write for children for two reasons: Either they have children, or they are children. I'm in the latter category. I loved my childhood, and I write for children so that I can recall it.
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Marc Aronson: Connecting the Dots of History
Marc Aronson is an author, editor, publisher, speaker, and historian who believes that young people, especially pre-teens and teenagers, are smart, passionate, and capable of engaging with interesting ideas in interesting ways. He has...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Avi
Avi was born in New York City in 1937. He grew up in a family of readers, writers, and artists. His twin sister, who gave him the nickname "Avi" at an early age, also became a writer.
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With t.a. Barron
T.A. Barron grew up on a ranch north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. He attended Princeton University, where he completed the Teacher Certification program and served as class president before receiving his B.A. in History in 1974....
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Joan Bauer
Joan Bauer was born in 1951 in River Forest, Illinois. The eldest of three sisters, Joan grew up writing stories, poems, and entries in her diary. Joan's mother was a high school English teacher and her grandmother, who lived at home,...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Judy Blume
Judy Blume grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the setting of many of her books. As a child, she dreamed of being all kinds of things - detectives, a spy, an actress, even a cowgirl, but never a writer. Though she loved to read and made up...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Susan Campbell Bartoletti was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and grew up surrounded by lots of pets - ducks, guinea pigs, parakeets, hamsters, even a goat. As a girl, Bartoletti enjoyed horseback riding, piano lessons and exploring...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Gennifer Choldenko
Gennifer grew up in Southern California surrounded by older siblings and cousins who called her names like "Shrimp," "Short Stuff," and "Snot-nose," so maybe it's not surprising that several of her books feature strong sibling...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Sneed Collard
Sneed B. Collard III grew up in Santa Barbara, California. With two parents working at the university as biologists, Sneed developed an early curiosity and love for science and the natural world. When his parents divorced, Sneed's father...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Christopher Paul Curtis
Christopher Paul Curtis was born in Flint, Michigan in 1953. Growing up in an all-black neighborhood, the only white people he ever saw were the teachers at his school. From kindergarten through eighth grade, Curtis was a straight-A...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Kate Di Camillo
Kate DiCamillo was born in Philadelphia in 1964. Because she had pneumonia for the first five winters of her life, the doctor suggested that she would do better in a warmer climate. So, in 1969, Kate, her brother, and her mother moved to...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With l.m. Elliott
Laura Elliott grew up just outside Washington D.C., and came of age during the Vietnam War protests and Watergate, so she was very aware of history in the making. One of her first clear memories was of JFK's tragic assassination. Fast...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Margarita Engle
Margarita Engle is an award-winning author of books for children, young adults, and adults. The daughter of an American father and Cuban mother, Engle spent her childhood summers in Cuba, where she developed a deep bond with her extended...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Timothy Basil Ering
Timothy Basil Ering grew up on Cape Cod in Massachusetts with water, boats, and fisherman all around him. He remembers vividly when he was able to read a book the whole way through all by himself. That book was Green Eggs and Ham, and...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Sid Fleischman
What's the trick to writing more than 60 books? Award-winning author Sid Fleischman found the magic of writing a book is well, like magic. Fleischman toured as a professional vaudeville magician after he finished high school and wrote...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Candace Fleming
In second grade, Fleming discovered a passion for language. She can still remember the day her teacher, Miss Johnson, held up a horn-shaped basket filled with papier-mache pumpkins and asked the class to repeat the word "cornucopia." She...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Jack Gantos
Jack Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. His parents moved so often that he attended 10 different schools between kindergarten and 12th grade. The Gantos family rented a variety of homes in Pennsylvania, Florida, North...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With John Green
John Green, author and a semi-professional videoblogger, lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with his wife, Sarah and his dog Willy. He was born in Indianapolis in 1977, grew up in Florida and then moved to Alabama where he attended Indian...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Shannon Hale
Shannon's mother says she was a storyteller from birth, jabbering endlessly in nonsensical baby-talk. Once she could speak, she made up stories and bribed younger siblings to perform them in mini-plays until, thankfully, an elementary...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Emma Walton Hamilton
A former actress, Emma Walton Hamilton worked in theater, film, and television for 10 years before turning her attention to directing, producing, educating and writing. She is one of the founders of Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Deborah Heiligman
Heiligman was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and lived in the same house her entire childhood. One of her favorite school memories is of her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Ryan, who created magical reading nooks for her students - like an...
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Philip M. Hoose
Phillip Hoose is the author of books, essays, stories, songs, and articles, including the National Book Award winning book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.
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Ad lit.org: A Video Interview With Deborah Hopkinson
Deborah Hopkinson was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. From an early age she was an avid reader, even hiding her own books inside the school textbooks she was supposed to be reading in class. History and science were her favorite school...