A childhood menagerie

I’m Katherine Applegate, and I’m the author of many books for young children.

I loved animals growing up. I had extraordinarily tolerant parents fortunately. Big menagerie. Mostly dogs and cats. But at about age 10, I became the first person in East Grand Rapids, Michigan to have gerbils. And they were quite exotic then. And Sandy and Max liked each other, and continued their happy marriage for some time.

And I was inundated with baby gerbils. So I promptly became that girl who sold gerbils to the world. When I got into high school, I worked for a vet for a couple of years, and I really enjoyed that. I actually thought I wanted to be a vet. Fiction seemed really pointless to me. But I gradually came around.