FIVE PAGES A DAY

“I’ve never survived an avalanche or been shipwrecked off the coast of Africa or been abducted by a deranged arsonist. I haven’t traveled back in time or seen a ghost or been arrested for shoplifting.” The prolific Kehret (The Stranger Next Door, p. 415, etc.) has done none of these things, so where does she get her ideas for her fast-paced, well-plotted stories (as school kids ask her all the time)? “I have experienced the emotions that each of these situations creates. I’ve been afraid. I’ve been cold, lonely, and angry.” The author takes readers through the story of her life and shows how she became a writer and where she gets her ideas. When she was ten, she edited Dog Newspaper, her neighborhood paper. Later, she wrote 25-word contest entries and won a trip to Hawaii from a department store and a new car for her entry on why she likes Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner. Committed to writing five pages per day, she started writing articles and stories for magazines, books for adults such as Refinishing and Restoring Your Piano, and, finally, books for children. When her first children’s books were published, she knew she had found her niche and no longer wrote for adults. Like her novels, this memoir is written in spare, lively prose with plenty of interesting details, anecdotes, and insights. Her bouts with polio as a child and post-polio syndrome later portray a person determined to enjoy each day and make the most of her talents. Readers will come to know and like this writer through this engaging, genial account and will want to get those novels they haven’t yet read. (Nonfiction. 8-13)