Many of my books are biographies. I went to graduate school to learn to be a librarian, but during college days I had a professor who would burst into the room as the character we were studying. That hooked me on history. I try to let you see real persons, people who made mistakes but had something positive about them.  These were real people reacting to events -- that's what history is.  I don't write much fiction because I can't make up anything as good as those incredible stories I find while researching in the musty, crusty, dusty part of the library.

Sometimes, though, my mind slips off somewhere else.  I'm not even close to being a poet, but every once in a while things come out in rhyme.  A little while ago a friend of mine, Babs Bell Hajdusiewicz, was choosing poems for a book of verse for young children.  She wanted the poems to be full of rhythm and rhyme, and very short.  Besides that, the poems were supposed to be about things kids need to know.  Well, because I had spent all those years at school, I knew some of those things. Words began to roll around in my head, but they just weren't coming out right to make a good rhyme.  Then the strangest thing happened.  I'd go to bed at night, and the next morning I'd wake up very early with the verse exactly right, but if I turned on the light to write it down, I couldn't remember it!  After that happened once or twice, I was ready.  Early each morning before daylight, with those words dancing in my head, I would grab the pencil and paper beside my bed and scribble furiously.  When I turned the light on, it was very hard to read my writing, but I figured it out.  You can read my poems in Poetry Works! The First Verse.

I started out writing for Sunday School take-home papers. I wrote nonfiction articles, a few stories, and created puzzles for them. Later, I had articles published in Boys' Life and Highlights for Children. Now, I spend most of my time writing books. Often I learn about things just because I am curious. Sometimes this information turns into books. Don't ever underestimate what you have in your mind.

Because I want my books to be the best they can be, I am a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and for ten years served as head of the Houston chapter.