"When I was little I tried to copy everything my mother did. I sat with her at the kitchen table where I fashioned letters of the alphabet into what I thought were real words. It was fun! It was the beginning of my own desire to write. Then I learned to read! Books were a zillion different kinds of candy and I wished to discover all the flavors."

Born on February 26th, Sharon Bell Mathis has tantalized her literary taste buds, and ours, since the publication of her first book Sidewalk Story (1969). In 1976, The Hundred Penny Box received a Newbery Honor.

Her favorite childhood reading place, the fire escape outside her kitchen window was the inspiration for one of her first published short stories for children, The Fire Escape. "I kept company with African chieftains and talking spiders, trolls and giants, princesses and princes, kings and queens, dinosaurs and donkeys." She still uses reading as a tool in her writing. "When I am writing a new novel and the images will not work, and I am feeling awful, I get away from my typewriter for a few days and read. Later, perhaps in a week, I am able to create again."