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Growing Up

I grew up in the military. By the time I was fifteen I had lived in Oklahoma, Austria, Florida, and four different army posts in Virginia and North Carolina. Moving was never traumatic for me, partly, I think, because I had very close and loving relationships with my parents, my twin brother, my younger brother, and my older sister.

But if moving was not traumatic, staying in one place was. When my dad finally retired to a small town in North Carolina, I nearly went crazy with boredom. I craved the adventure and changing scenery of our military life.

Miraculously, one day I found these things, literally only a block away -- at the local community theater. From then on, I spent nearly every waking hour after school there, either acting or working backstage. When I stepped from the sunny street into that musty-smelling, dark little theater, all things seemed possible.

From College to New York City

I went on to study drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In my junior year, I discovered an even greater realm of adventure and changing scenery: the world of mythology and comparative religion. So I became a religion major and learned as much as I could about other cultures.

After graduating from college in the early 1970s, I lived an intensely varied life. For a while I camped in a cave on the island of Crete. Then I joined up with a small band of European young people heading to "The East." We traveled overland in a caravan of rickety vans through sixteen Asian countries, including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal.

We nearly lost our lives, first in an earthquake in northern Afghanistan and then a riot in Kabul. My trip came to an abrupt halt in Kathmandu when I got blood poisoning. During the two weeks I spent in a missionary hospital there, I read all of the Tolkien trilogy. I would sleep, read, and look out the windows at the Himalayas. To this day, my journey to "The East" is tangled up in my mind with Frodo's adventures.

After I returned home and recovered from my illness, I promptly headed back into the real world. I worked as a window dresser in Carmel, California, as a medical assistant in Monterey, California, and as a Russian travel consultant in Washington, D.C. One night in Washington I attended the opening of a musical about Jesse James. From the balcony I fell in love with Will Osborne, the actor/musician playing Jesse. I loved his boots and his white cowboy hat; I loved how he sang and strummed the guitar. A year later, in New York City, we were married.

Thereafter, when I wasn't on the road with Will, I worked as a waitress in Greenwich Village, taught acting classes in a nursing home in the Bronx, was a bartender in Broadway theaters, and had a job as an assistant editor for a children's magazine.

I Begin to Write

Then one day, out of the blue, I began writing a story about an eleven-year-old girl in the South. The girl was a lot like me, and many of the incidents in the story were similar to happenings in my childhood. The first draft was crudely written, but it must have communicated something to an editor, because shortly after I finished, it became a young adult novel called Run, Run as Fast as You Can. Finally I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Now twenty years and more than fifty books later, I feel I'm one of the most fortunate people on earth. I've been an elegant spider detective who plays jazz clarinet, and a small girl traveling on the back of a moonhorse. I’ve journeyed through Greek mythology, Norse mythology, medieval stories, and American tall tales. I've "met" George Washington and Ben Franklin, and without even leaving my home I've traveled around the globe, learning about the religions of the world.

Most recently, I've taken journeys through space in The Magic Tree House, visiting the times of dinosaurs, knights, mummies, pirates, and ninjas, and traveling to the rain forest, the Ice Age, the moon, a coral reef, the Wild West, Africa, and the Arctic.

The Magic Tree House has also whisked me to schools all over the country, and the contact I now have with children has brought overwhelming joy into my life. I love the letters I get from them and I love reading countless Magic Tree House stories that they've written. I feel as if these kids and I are all exploring the creative process together, using our imaginations plus our reading and writing skills to take us wherever we want to go. This, I tell my small fellow authors, is true magic.

Growing Up I grew up in the military. By the time I was fifteen I had lived in Oklahoma, Austria, Florida, and four different army posts in Virginia and North Carolina. Moving was never traumatic for me, partly, I think, because I had very close and loving relationships with my parents, my twin brother, my younger brother, and my older sister. But if moving was not traumatic, staying in one plac... More