After I got my undergraduate degree, I did not go straight to graduate school, I worked in book publishing. My parents were both set designers, so I sort of had grown up in the world of where art meets commerce. So I did my own version of that, I worked in book publishing. But then I went back and got my doctorate, and I switched to American history partially because it was going to take me a long time to learn Latin and German and Greek and whatever I might have to learn.
But I also think that I’ve always loved American history. When I was a young boy, my parents were worried because I wasn’t reading. And I didn’t seem interested in reading. Until one day I proudly told them “I love this book!” and it was the first book of George Washington. And I read it because it mattered. I really wanted to know about George Washington. I had no interest in Dick and Jane and reading as reading.
I wanted reading to know. So I returned and got my doctorate in American History. But at the same time, I was working by that point at Harper, which was then Harper & Row before it was Harper & Collins, in children’s books. And so I started to think, is there a way to bring together one side of my life, the academic side, where all these really interesting ideas and discoveries are taking place in a language adults can’t read, much less kids, and this other side of my life, where I’m learning how to write for young people, how to connect with young people, can I bring those two sides of my life together? And that’s what I’ve tried to do.
