Rebecca Stead grew up in New York City, where she was lucky enough to attend the kind of elementary school where a person could sit in a windowsill, or even under a table, and read a book, and no one told you to come out and be serious.
"Reading books made me think about writing. But I didn't write a lot. Sometimes I just wrote down things I overheard -jokes, or snatches of conversation. You could probably fit everything I wrote before the age of 17 into one (skinny) notebook. Reading books made me think about writing. But I didn't write a lot. Sometimes I just wrote down things I overheard -jokes, or snatches of conversation. You could probably fit everything I wrote before the age of 17 into one (skinny) notebook. Much, much later, I became a lawyer, got married, and started working as a public defender. But I still wrote stories (for adults) when I could find the time. My first child, a fabulous son, was born. A few years later, I had another fabulous son. There wasn't much time for writing stories after that. But I still tried.
One day, my three-year-old son, though fabulous, accidentally pushed my laptop off the dining-room table, and my stories were gone. Poof.
So. It was time to write something new. Something joyful (to cheer me up: I was pretty grouchy about the lost stories). I went to a bookstore (an independent bookstore) and bought an armload of books that I remembered loving as a kid. I read them. I went back to the store and bought more books written for children. I read them. And then I began to write again."
Rebecca is the author of First Light, the Newbery Medal winner When You Reach, and the highly acclaimed Liar Spy and Goodbye Stranger. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.