Jerry Spinelli
Jerry Spinelli
Jerry Spinelli is an American writer of children's novels that feature adolescence and early adulthood. He is best known for Maniac Magee and Wringer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth1 February 1941
CityNorristown, PA
CountryUnited States of America
enchantment earth stargirl
It (enchantment) started when the earth was born. It never stops. It is, always. It's just here.
age baseball goofy league major months profile reading seems women writers
I think I have a pretty goofy profile for a writer. It seems to me most writers were reading 'Little Women' when they were 6 months old. At the age of a lot of my readers, I wanted to be a major league baseball player. I didn't read much.
conforming everybody kids mean morning peer wake wear wish
Just because so many conforming kids wake up every morning asking, 'What is everybody else going to wear today?' doesn't mean that they don't wish it were different. Peer pressure is just that: pressure.
books collecting hard life matter nobody sending
I was very naive, and I thought it was just a matter of writing my first book and sending it in, and for the rest of my life I would be writing books and collecting royalties. Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published.
past wake-up vowels
Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.
There are bits and pieces of me probably in every one of my 35 or so books.
dust everyday hill humming life sneakers
Ideas come from ordinary, everyday life. And from imagination. And from feelings. And from memories. Memories of dust in my sneakers and humming whitewalls down a hill called Monkey.
became far
I became a children's author by accident. As far as I'm concerned, I write for everybody.
author including several terrific written
Even including myself, my favorite author is Eileen Spinelli, who I happen to live with. She's a terrific writer and has written several of my all-time favorites.
best care page reach reader touch
Write about what you care about. If you do that, you're probably going to do your best writing, reach off the page and touch the reader. How are you going to make the reader care if you don't care yourself?
lasted till york
When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. That lasted till I was about ten. Then I wanted to be a baseball player. Preferably shortstop for the New York Yankees.
behind carry grandkids kids notes people room six sofa stories taking
When people hear I have six kids and 16 grandkids, they think, 'Oh, boy, you must get a lot of stories from them.' I don't. It's not like I'm behind the sofa in the living room taking notes while the grandkids carry on.
age elementary grandkids high junior kids point reference
More often than not, my reference point is not the kids or the grandkids but myself when I was that age. I remember the days at Hartranft Elementary and Stewart Junior High in Norristown.
job left people
Most people are looking for a challenging, interesting job. I wanted a boring, undemanding job so that I could forget about it at 5, so that I would have something left over at the end of the day to do my own stuff.