Mara
Rockliff
children's
author
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About Me
My work has appeared in
Plays: The Drama Magazine for Young
Children, Highlights for
Children magazine, The
Washington Post, and other
publications. I'm the author of Pieces
of Another World (Sylvan Dell) and Next to an Ant
(Scholastic/Children's Press).
I've written many books for the
educational market, including leveled readers for Benchmark Education's
Early
Connections series and McGraw-Hill's Gear Up! and Leveled Biography
series, and
have been a contributing writer for innumerable language arts and
social studies textbooks including
Holt,
Rinehart and Winston's popular Elements of Literature series, K12's The Human Odyssey, and forthcoming
programs for McDougal Littell and Prentice Hall. My titles for
Kane Press include The Midnight Kid,
Stressbusters, and Check it
Out!
(writing as
Nan Walker) and Ty's Triple Trouble, The Great Shape-Up, and
The Real Me
(writing as
Eleanor May). My picture books The
Busiest Street in Town and My
Heart Will Not Sit Down will be coming soon from Knopf. I
live in southwest Virginia with my family.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are so many of your books published under pen names?Generally, I use pen names for the books that people hire me to write, and my own name for the books I write because I want to.
How many books have you written?
Do I count the teeny-tiny books with hardly any words? Do I count the big fat textbooks I wrote some of, or most of, but not the whole thing? Do I count the books I haven't sold to publishers yet? Do I count the books I've sold to publishers, but that haven't come out yet? Um . . . somewhere between 2 and 200. I think.
What's your favorite thing you ever wrote?
In the spring of 2002, I heard about a group of primary school children (grades K-3) in rural Dillwyn, Virginia who had saved up $455.25 for new equipment for their run-down playground. These kids and their families didn't have much money, and it had taken them two years to collect that many nickels, dimes, and pennies. But after the September 11 attacks, the children decided to donate it all to the Red Cross, and give up their dream of a new playground.
Infrequently Asked Questions
Have you ever eaten fried grasshoppers?Yes.
Would you eat them again?
No.
Do you have a TV?
No. But I do watch movies.
What's your most useless skill?
I can do an excellent imitation of a gorilla.
Describe your most surreal moment.
Wow, there have been so many . . . I guess it was watching my twenty-month-old daughter flying around the top of a Mexican traveling circus tent in the arms of a trapeze artist dressed as Spiderman.
How many states have you thrown up in?
At least 12, including Hawaii.
Favorite
Childhood Books
The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis)
Freaky Friday and its sequels (Mary Rodgers)
Thursday's Child and the Shoes books (Noel Streatfield)
Anything by Edward Eager or E. Nesbit
The Betsy-Tacey books, especially the later ones (Maud Hart Lovelace)
A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels (Madeleine L'Engle)
The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)
Mandy (Julie Edwards)
Bed-Knobs and Broomsticks (Mary Norton)
The Trumpet of the Swan (E. B. White)--though now I prefer Charlotte's Web
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E. L. Konigsburg)
The All-of-a-Kind Family books (Sydney Taylor)
Caddie Woodlawn (Carol Ryrie Brink)
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Black Hearts in Battersea (Joan Aiken)
The Great Brain books, especially The Great Brain at the Academy (John D. Fitzgerald)
Millie's Boy and the Soup books (Robert Newton Peck)
A Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Roald Dahl)
The Egypt Game (Zilpha Keatley Snyder)
No More Magic (Avi)
. . . and a few I didn't get to read till later
Anne of Green Gables and its sequels (L. M. Montgomery)
The Harry Potter books
The Penderwicks (Jeanne Birdsall)
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© 2007 Mara Rockliff. All rights reserved.