About Carolyn Reeder . . . .

I was born in Washington, DC, and grew up there. Our neighborhood had very few kids—and no girls my age—so I spent most of my out-of-school time practicing the piano, reading, and daydreaming. Because school was incredibly dull back then, I spent a lot of my in-school time reading and daydreaming, too. (The picture shows me at twelve, with my dog Rusty.)

When I was twenty-one, I graduated from The American University, . . . married my college sweetheart, Jack Reeder, . . . “set up housekeeping” in our tiny apartment, . . . and started teaching school—all in the space of three busy months!

Four years later, Jack and I started our family. Soon we had a son and a daughter—and they had a dog and a cat. During the years I was a full-time mom, I took one graduate-level class each semester, and when our son was in third grade and our daughter started kindergarten, I went back to teaching—with a brand-new Master’s degree.

While the children were growing up, our family did a lot of things together, including hiking and camping. My first writing—nonfiction for adults—was inspired by some of our hiking experiences in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park.

Later, when I needed a new challenge in my life, I decided to write fiction. My first published book for young people, Shades of Gray, won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction and a number of other honors. And that was the beginning of my life as a writer.