Author Spotlight’s

Cynthia Rylant didn’t read much when she was a kid. “There just weren’t that many books around,” she remembers. “No public library, no money to buy books - no bookstores, anyway.” Instead, she spent her time playing, something she now says is the best thing for young writers to do. There was some writing available for her, in the form of Archie and Jughead comic books and paperback romance novels. So she earned her “training as a writer” with comics from the local drugstore, buying them “three for a quarter – plus Danny Alderman who lived behind me used to trade me a big pile of his for a big pile of mine.
“When she was four years old, Rylant’s parents got divorced, and she moved with her mother to Cool Ridge, West Virginia. She lived with her grandparents while her mother attended nursing school; their mountain home had no electricity or running water, and they had no car. Her grandparents grew and hunted their own food, and Rylant assures readers that, “Yes I ate rabbits and squirrels!” Though she missed her parents, many of Rylant’s strongest memories come from this time in her life. “It’s that time,” she says, “that seems to have sunk thickest into my brain and my heart, and much of what I saw and heard then has come into my books…”

“I don’t know why I became a writer,” she now says. “I didn’t write much as a child. The only stories I ever tried were called ‘My Adventures with the Beatles.’ That was in sixth grade when I was madly in love with Paul McCartney.”

Her first book, When I Was Young in the Mountains was published in 1982, winning the American Book Award and becoming a Caldecott Honor Book for Diane Good’s illustrations. The story was based on her life in Cool Ridge, though it appeals to anyone interested in Appalachian life.

After her first book, Rylant went back to school for a Professional Librarian degree at Kent State University. There she met her “sweetheart,” fellow author Dav Pilkey, and they moved to Oregon together in 1990. She continued writing, and now has over twenty books in print, including picture books, children’s chapter books, young adult fiction, and poetry. Missing May won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award and a Newbery Honor Medal; four of her books were named Notable Children’s Books, two were named Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library Association, and the Ohioana Award in 1992 for Appalachia: The Voices of Sleeping Birds. 

Cynthia Rylant’s books include chapter books, such as Missing May; picture books like The Ticky Tacky Doll and The Relatives Came; and numerous Early Readers including the series’ Poppleton, Henry and Mudge, Mr. Putter and Tabby Cobble Street Cousins, and high Rise Private Eye.