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as a child "Sometimes I think I AM Judy Moody," says Megan McDonald, author of the award-winning JUDY MOODY books. "I'm certainly moody, like she is. Judy has a strong voice and always speaks up for herself. I like that." Being able to speak up for herself wasn't always easy. The author grew up as the youngest of five sisters in a house full of books in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father, an ironworker, built bridges across the city and was known to his coworkers as "Little Johnny the Storyteller." Every evening at dinnertime the McDonald family would gather around the kitchen table, talking and telling stories. But with four older sisters, Megan remembers barely being able to get a word in edgewise. "I'm told I began to stutter," she says. “That’s when my mother gave me a notebook, so that I could write down everything I wanted to say!” as an adult Megan has a B.A. in English from Oberlin College and a Masters in Library Science from the University of Pittsburgh. When she took her first writing class, her professor told her to go home and rip up all the poems she had ever written. He told her she was a prose writer. Megan went home and looked up “prose” in the dictionary, to find out what she was! Before Megan became a writer, she worked in museums, libraries and bookstores. She has also made a living as a storyteller and a park ranger. Megan McDonald now lives with her husband in Sebastopol, California. as a writer Pretending to be a pencil sharpener was Megan McDonald’s first experience as a writer. She was 10 years old when she wrote the story for her school newspaper. “Anything can become an idea for a story,” says McDonald. “Even a pencil sharpener!” Megan has since written and published twenty-five books for children, including the hilarious Judy Moody adventures, which are largely inspired by her childhood memories of growing up with four older sisters. Megan says, “I’m lucky to be a writer, because I get to spend my days imagining. (And I get to go to work in my pajamas!) I spend my days thinking like a hermit crab or Little Blue penguin or a girl who loves bugs. Or pretending I’m a bossy big sister with a little brother named Stink. Or supposing I’m a young girl leaving everything I know behind to travel the Santa Fe Trail back in 1848. I spend my days looking at things sideways, upside down, questioning everything, always wanting to see the inside.” megan mcdonald on “moods” and siblings I first got to thinking about moods as a story idea when I visited schools and talked with kids of all ages. Often they would ask me, “Are you ever in a bad mood? Can you write books when you’re in a bad mood?” This inspired me to explore a character with a whole range of moods, good and bad, happy and sad, which led to the ups and downs of the character Judy Moody. Thinking back on my own childhood, growing up as the youngest of five girls often put me in a mood. There was the time my whole family took a beach vacation in Florida, and I had to stay home with my crazy aunt. I didn’t get to see the ocean until I was a teenager! Then there was the time we all went to Washington D. C. My sisters got to take a tour of the White House, where the president of the United States lives, but I was too young to go, so I stayed home and played the Rubber Hand trick (as Judy does to Stink) on my sisters when they returned. And don’t forget the time my mom made us all pilgrim costumes to dress up for Halloween. With four older sisters, those pilgrim costumes got passed down to me year after year after year. After a while, it put me in a bad mood just to think about being a pilgrim again. “BOR-ing!” as Judy Moody would say. So, guess what? I wrote a book about it! (soon to be published by Candlewick Press.) TEN THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT MEGAN MCDONALD
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