Hi! I’m Erica S. Perl. I’m the author of books for young children. Including Chicken Butt, Chicken Butt’s Back, Chicken Bedtime Is Really Early, Dotty, and other picture books. I’m also the author of When Life Gives You O.J., and novels for middle grade readers. And I’m the author of Vintage Veronica, a novel for young adults.
I grew up in Vermont; Burlington, Vermont. And both of my parents were teachers and my mother taught English as a second language, my dad taught medical school. So there was always a lot of books and written words in my house and I read a lot, I read all the time as a child, I went to the library a lot. And I started writing at a really early point and in fact before I started writing my own books I would dictate them to my mom and she would write them down for me. So that’s sort of how my writing began. And I got a lot of encouragement at home and in school which helped a lot.
I think that some of my favorite writers when I listen to them talk they tell me there’s an incredible connection between reading and writing, the more you read, the more you see the world through all sorts of different perspectives, and the more words you have at your disposal. So I think there’s a huge link between reading and writing and expressing yourself.
And when I was at a point when I had stories to tell but couldn’t make the words come out right on the paper, I would tell my mom the stories and she would write them down word for word without correcting my vocabulary or my grammar. And sometimes I would draw pictures and I would explain to them what they meant and she would just create books for me and with me. And gave me a real sense that I was a writer before I could actually form the words.
This makes me feel old to say it but we had a mimeograph machine and we would mimeograph, we would copy my stories and poems and print out copies of them so I felt extremely published at a point where I really, really wasn’t yet.