I started out life as a nomad. My father was a career Marine, and my family crisscrossed the country from one military posting to another. I remember arriving at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, when I was nine years old. In a few days I would enroll in my fourth school in four years. Sensing I was a bit lonely, my parents knew just what to do. They bought me a book. Eagerly I tore into the children’s edition of Little Women. Before my first day of school, I already had four new friends – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. And since Jo was clearly the most interesting sister of the bunch – the strong, daring one who pushed the limits of what girls were allowed to do — I wanted to be a writer just like Jo.
Well, there was plenty of time to worry about that later and much to do in the meantime. More moves to make, friends to meet. Eventually my family ended up in California. We loved it. When my father retired from active service, my parents decided to stay. And so life went on amidst the palm trees and ocean breezes.
By the time I started seriously writing, I was married, had two little girls, and was living on the East Coast again. (I told you I was a nomad!) My stories – playful ones about dragons, wizards, and quirky pirates – ended up in Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, Children’s Digest among other magazines. Nonfiction began to appeal to me as my husband and I took our young children to museums, and they began asking questions about the natural world. But it took a comet to push me into writing my first book.
In the mid 1980s, the media was buzzing with news of Halley’s Comet approaching the earth. I had visions of a dazzling star with a tail that slashed across half the sky. When that didn’t happen, my husband and I resorted to a telescope to find the elusive comet. After several weeks, all we saw was a faint blur. Halley’s Comet hadn’t come close to all the hype. But the experience got me thinking about another comet and the remarkable woman who discovered it — Maria Mitchell, the first woman astronomer in the United States. Like Jo, she refused to accept boundaries on what she could do or accomplish. I became so fascinated by Maria that she became the subject of my book, Rooftop Astronomer.
Once I had written that first biography, I was hooked. I went on to write about some amazing people like Stephen Hawking, Dr. Alice Hamilton who founded industrial medicine in the U.S., and Tim Berners-Lee who invented the world wide web. There are so many exciting, true stories waiting to be told. I love making history come alive through biography. I’m equally enthusiastic exploring recent events and contemporary issues. Recently I’ve returned to my first love in children’s literature – picture books. I’m also working on a middle grade novel. As far as I’m concerned, writing books for young readers – be it nonfiction, novels, pictures books or anything at all — is simply the best job in the world.