Rebecca Stead
Rebecca Stead
Rebecca Steadis an American writer of fiction for children and teens. She won the American Newbery Medal in 2010, the oldest award in children's literature, for her second novel When You Reach Me...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth16 January 1968
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
embody everybody kinds people prefer
As a reader, I much prefer to read a book where people embody all kinds of ideas and everybody is making mistakes.
favourite james judy kids kinds klein liked paula ray science
I never had a favourite book! I liked all kinds of things - science fiction, so I read Heinlen and Ray Bradbury, and I also liked reading about kids like myself, so I read Judy Blume and Norma Klein and Paula Danzinger and a lot of other writers. I also read James Herriot!
anymore books few fiction kinds loved people robert science wonderful
I loved reading all kinds of books, but I particularly loved books like 'Red Planet' by Robert Heinlein, which very few people read anymore but is a wonderful science fiction story.
mom honest kind
Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.
book felt inspired loved sort trying
I think that my first book - I was trying to write the kind of book I would have loved as a kid. So it's sort of, like, a book inspired by my childhood reading and the passion that I felt about reading when I was a kid.
allowed bit
I think things hit me very hard, and I wish I had allowed things to roll off my back a little bit more.
earrings hanging homemade lovely wall
I would never look a gift horse in the mouth. I've had some lovely homemade earrings and, recently, a wall hanging made in the style of Georges Seurat.
avoid books tend
My books tend to have a lot of questions in them, and they tend to avoid black and white, for lack of a better metaphor.
mostly prefer telling
Mostly what I try to do is build emotion. Only I'd prefer not to do it by telling you about emotion but by pushing that emotion down.
change good kids shorthand time
'Middle school' is used as shorthand for a time when things change. It's a time a lot of kids feel like they don't even have one good friend.
hard work
Try really, really hard not to judge your own work too harshly.
broader exploring questions time
I'm always thinking about identity. And the middle-school years are a time of exploring questions about who you are and who you want to be. For the first time, you see the world in a broader sense.
dad feeling grew mostly second time
I grew up mostly an only child. My dad remarried when I was a teenager. And then I had two stepbrothers. And then my dad had a second child. So I have a brother from the time I was 15. But I really grew up feeling like an only child.
awe basically family
I am basically in awe of every family's ability to make decisions for their kids.