DeFelice, Cynthia C.
When I was a child I didn’t write much, and never dreamed of becoming a writer. But I was always reading. My parents read to me, bought me books, and took me to the library. Summer vacations began with a trip to the bookstore, where my sister, my brothers, and I were allowed to pick out books for our summer reading. To me, those trips to the bookstore were even better than the rare occasions when we were given a quarter and turned loose at the penny-candy store on the boardwalk. I loved choosing the books I wanted, taking them home, putting my nameplate inside, and taking my time deciding which ones to read first.
I read everything: “good” books and “junk,” including all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, comic books, and, my favorite, MAD magazine. The books I liked best were the ones that made me feel as if I was right in the story, part of what was happening. The story became my story. In that way, I was able to have exciting adventures and experience life from the point of view of people very different from myself.
My childhood was a happy one. I felt safe, secure, and loved. But, like everyone, I had my secret joys and sorrows, confusions, embarrassments, and terrors, many of which I recall vividly. What solace it was to discover in books characters who shared emotions I was unable to explain, even to myself, but which I felt so intensely. Reading made me feel connected to the big world outside my nice, safe suburban neighborhood in Pennsylvania.
I had many different, interesting jobs before deciding to attend graduate school to become a school librarian. I was pretty sure I would love my new career, and I did, because it combined two of my favorite things: kids and books.
In my library work I read a lot of stories aloud and did a lot of storytelling. Soon I knew that I wanted to write stories as well as tell them. My first book, The strange night writing of Jessamine Colter, soon followed. Much as I loved my job, I began writing full-time and never looked back.
Five of my picture books, Dancing skeleton, Mule eggs, Three perfect peaches (co-authored by my storytelling partner, Mary DeMarsh), Old Granny and the bean thief, and One potato, two potato, grew naturally from folk tales that I told aloud for years before writing them down.
Five novels of historical fiction, Weasel and its sequel, Bringing Ezra back, Lostman’s river, The apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker, and Nowhere to call home, all grew from incidents in history that captured my imagination.
Devil’s Bridge and its sequel, Death at Devil’s Bridge, were both inspired by experiences I’ve had on the beautiful island of Martha’s Vineyard.
I loved ghost stories as a kid, and still do! So the trilogy of novels about Allie Nichols, who discovers she is a “ghost magnet,” was great fun to write. In them I was able to combine my love of spooky tales, dogs, and stories of family and friendship.
All of my books, including The light on Hogback Hill and Under the same sky, are rooted in some way in experiences I have had, either as an adult or a child.
The idea for Casey in the bath came about as I lay in the bathtub one night taking a bubble bath, remembering how I drove my mother to despair when it was time to wash my hair. If only the Ambrosial Products representative had come to our door . . . When we were growing up, my older sister was quite sure that she didn’t belong in the same family as the rest of us. In The real, true Dulcie Campbell, Dulcie, too, is convinced that she is a princess who was switched at birth. Surely that’s the only way she could have ended up on a farm in Iowa mucking out the chicken coop!
Kids ask me, “What is the best thing about being an author?” There are so many “best things”! I like being able to work when I want to, at my own pace. I enjoy the opportunity to meet my readers, young and old, at conferences, schools, and festivals. I love the feeling of being caught up in the lives of the characters I am writing about. I enjoy the challenge of trying to write as honestly as I can, and I find enormous satisfaction in hearing from readers that something I wrote touched them, delighted them, made them shiver with fear or shake with laughter, or think about something new.
Cynthia C. DeFelice was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1951. She has worked as a bookseller, a barn painter, a storyteller, and a school librarian. Cynthia and her husband live in Geneva, New York.
– Courtesy of Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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