Hello I’m Mary Quattlebaum I’m a children’s book author and I’ve written over 19 children’s books including picture books, novels for kids, and poetry. I also love to teach writing and I teach writing workshop in the schools, love to do author visits in the schools, and talk to kids about their writing. And I very much enjoy teaching adults how to write for kids and I teach Vermont College MFA program for writing for children and young adults, and also at The Writer’s Center in Maryland.
Well I grew up in the country in the Tidewater, Virginia area, the oldest of seven children. My dad loved the natural world and also was very musical. One of my earliest memories is of my dad reciting nursery rhymes to me and my brothers and sisters, right before bedtime, and he did it in a very interactive way. He didn’t just stand there and like recite nursery rhymes to us. But he did in a call and response kind of a way. So we were very involved and actually loved that as I said it’s my earliest memory.
And you can probably imagine, being the oldest of seven kids, that I was the one that read aloud a lot. And in fact my mother would say, “would you rather watch the dishes or read to the kids?” Well, that was a no-brainer! So you know we all loved the Curious George books and the Amelia Bedelia books and you know those playful kinds of books.
So, I grew up with parents that were real supportive of reading. We’d go to the library every two weeks with a big laundry basket of books to return and we’d get more out. And you know we didn’t have a lot of money but books were very much a part of my growing up years.
I do remember loving sounds, the sound that bobwhite call in the fields and we had many animals, horses for example and the different noises that horses would make. And you know, as I mentioned my dad was very musical and we grew up with music. I love reading books that had lots of playful sounds in them too and I loved poetry.
So I guess it was just sort of a hodge podge of things that fed in my love of language and is hopefully also reflected back in my books.
