Katherine Paterson

Author profile

born

October 31, 1932 in Qing Jiang, China

gender

female

website

http://www.terabithia.com

genre

Children's Books

influences

Evelyn Husband

About this author

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From author's website:

People are always asking me questions I don't have answers for. One is, "When did you first know that you wanted to become a writer?" The fact is that I never wanted to be a writer, at least not when I was a child, or even a young woman. Today I want very much to be a writer. But when I was ten, I wanted to be either a movie star or a missionary. When I was twenty, I wanted to get married and have lots of children.

Another question I can't answer is, "When did you begin writing?" I can't remember. I know I began reading when I was four or five, because I couldn't stand not being able to. I must have tried writing soon afterward. Fortunately, very few samples of my early writing survived the eighteen moves I made before...more From author's website:

People are always asking me questions I don't have answers for. One is, "When did you first know that you wanted to become a writer?" The fact is that I never wanted to be a writer, at least not when I was a child, or even a young woman. Today I want very much to be a writer. But when I was ten, I wanted to be either a movie star or a missionary. When I was twenty, I wanted to get married and have lots of children.

Another question I can't answer is, "When did you begin writing?" I can't remember. I know I began reading when I was four or five, because I couldn't stand not being able to. I must have tried writing soon afterward. Fortunately, very few samples of my early writing survived the eighteen moves I made before I was eighteen years old. I say fortunately, because the samples that did manage to survive are terrible, with the single exception of a rather nice letter I wrote to my father when I was seven. We were living in Shanghai, and my father was working in our old home territory, which at the time was across various battle lines. I missed him very much, and in telling him so, I managed a piece of writing I am not ashamed of to this day.

A lot has happened to me since I wrote that letter. The following year, we had to refugee a second time because war between Japan and the United States seemed inevitable. During World War II, we lived in Virginia and North Carolina, and when our family's return to China was indefinitely postponed, we moved to various towns in North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, before my parents settled in Winchester, Virginia.

By that time, I was ready to begin college. I spent four years at King College in Bristol, Tennessee, doing what I loved best-reading English and American literature-and avoiding math whenever possible.

My dream of becoming a movie star never came true, but I did a lot of acting all through school, and the first writing for which I got any applause consisted of plays I wrote for my sixth-grade friends to act out.

On the way to becoming a missionary, I spent a year teaching in a rural school in northern Virginia, where almost all my children were like Jesse Aarons. I'll never forget that wonderful class. A teacher I once met at a meeting in Virginia told me that when she read Bridge to Terabithia to her class, one of the girls told her that her mother had been in that Lovettsville sixth grade. I am very happy that those children, now grown up with children of their own, know about the book. I hope they can tell by reading it how much they meant to me.

After Lovettsville, I spent two years in graduate school in Richmond, Virginia, studying Bible and Christian education; then I went to Japan. My childhood dream was, of course, to be a missionary to China and eat Chinese food three times a day. But China was closed to Americans in 1957, and a Japanese friend urged me to go to Japan instead. I remembered the Japanese as the enemy. They were the ones who dropped the bombs and then occupied the towns where I had lived as a child. I was afraid of the Japanese, and so I hated them. But my friend persuaded me to put aside those childish feelings and give myself a chance to view the Japanese in a new way.

If you've read my early books, you must know that I came to love Japan and feel very much at home there. I went to language school, and lived and worked in that country for four years. I had every intention of spending the rest of my life among the Japanese. But when I returned to the States for a year of study in New York, I met a young Presbyterian pastor who changed the direction of my life once again. We were married in 1962.

I suppose my life as a writer really began in 1964. The Presbyterian church asked me to write some curriculum materials for fifth- and sixth-graders. Since the church had given me a scholarship to study and I had married instead of going back to work in Japan, I felt I owed them something for their m(less)

combine editions
Books by Katherine Paterson

Average rating: 3.84 · 125,920 ratings · 6,988 reviews · 90 distinct works

	Bridge to Terabithia 3.89 avg rating — 100,830 ratings — published 1977 — 65 editions	My rating:
	Jacob Have I Loved 3.59 avg rating — 11,924 ratings — published 1980 — 36 editions	My rating:
	The Great Gilly Hopkins 3.78 avg rating — 5,409 ratings — published 1978 — 29 editions	My rating:
	Lyddie 3.49 avg rating — 1,836 ratings — published 1991 — 23 editions	My rating:
	Bread and Roses, Too 3.73 avg rating — 726 ratings — published 2006 — 10 editions	My rating:
	The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Paterson, Haru Wells (Illustrator) 3.62 avg rating — 598 ratings — published 1975 — 13 editions	My rating:
	The Same Stuff as Stars 3.76 avg rating — 492 ratings — published 2002 — 7 editions	My rating:
	The Day of the Pelican 3.65 avg rating — 355 ratings — published 2009 — 10 editions	My rating:
	Jip: His Story 3.51 avg rating — 405 ratings — published 1996 — 13 editions	My rating:
	Bridge to Terabithia Movie Tie-in Edition by Katherine Paterson, Donna Diamond (Illustrations) 4.01 avg rating — 279 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Katherine Paterson

“Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.”
― Katherine Paterson

115 people liked it

“It is not enough to simply teach children to read;
we have to give them something worth reading.
Something that will stretch their imaginations-
something that will help them make sense of their own lives
and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own.”
― Katherine Paterson

77 people liked it

“All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.”
― Katherine Paterson

tags: books , censorship , reading

50 people liked it

See all Katherine Paterson's quotes »

Polls

What frequently challenged or banned children's or young adult book (or book about banning books) should we read in May and June?

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

21 votes, 27.3%

Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks

14 votes, 18.2%

Memoirs of a Bookbat by Kathryn Lasky (about banning books)

11 votes, 14.3%

Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

8 votes, 10.4%

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler

8 votes, 10.4%

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

6 votes, 7.8%

Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry

5 votes, 6.5%

Girls and Sex by Wardell Baxter Pomeroy

3 votes, 3.9%

The Stupids Step Out by Harry Allard

1 vote, 1.3%

Running Loose by Chris Crutcher

0 votes, 0.0%

77 total votes

4 comments

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