Weissman - Our story begins: your favorite authors and illustrators share fun, inspiring, and occasionally ridiculous things they wrote and drew as kids

Like many of the people in this book, Elissa Brent Weissman has been writing stories since the time she could hold a pencil. Now grown up, shes the award-winning author of five novels for young readers, including The Short Seller, Nerd Camp, and Nerd Camp 2.0. Visit her online at ebweissman.com.

Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Simon & Schuster New York

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ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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All rights in each chapter are reserved to the individual copyright holder cited below and the content is reprinted here by the permission of the applicable copyright holder unless otherwise noted.

Compilation copyright 2017 by Elissa Brent Weissman

Chapter 1 2017 by Dan Santat Chapter 2 2017 by Raquel Jaramillo (R. J. Palacio) Chapter 3 2017 by Marla Frazee Chapter 4 2017 by Jarrett J. Krosoczka Chapter 5 2017 by Thanhh Li Chapter 6 2017 by Eric Rohmann Chapter 7 2017 by Linda Sue Park. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Chapter 8 2017 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, excluding cover of The Food Fairies, 1978 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Chapter 9 2017 by Gordon Korman, excluding How to Handle Your Parents, 1975 by Gordon Korman. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Chapter 10 2017 by Elissa Brent Weissman Chapter 11 2017 by Kathi Appelt Chapter 12 2017 by Gail Carson Levine. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Chapter 13 2017 by Chris Gall Chapter 14 2017 by Rita Williams-Garcia Chapter 15 2017 by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Chapter 16 2017 by Peter Lerangis Chapter 17 2017 by Candace Fleming Chapter 18 2017 by Brian Selznick Chapter 19 2017 by Tom Angleberger Chapter 20 2017 by Alex Gino Chapter 21 2017 by Tim Federle Chapter 22 2017 by KA Productions, excluding Mothers Day Poem 1995 by KA Productions Chapter 23 2017 by Grace Lin Chapter 24 2017 by Chris Grabenstein Chapter 25 2017 by Yuyi Morales Chapter 26 2017 by Ashley Bryan

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Jacket design copyright 2017 by Simon & Schuster; jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian; interior design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian and Irene Metaxatos

The text for this book was set in ITC Galliard Std.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Weissman, Elissa Brent editor.

Title: Our story begins: your favorite authors and illustrators share fun, inspiring, and occasionally ridiculous things they wrote and drew as kids / edited by Elissa Brent Weissman.

Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016036528 | ISBN 9781481472081 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781481472104 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Childrens writings, American. | American literature20th century. | Childrens artUnited States.

Classification: LCC PS508.C5 O97 2017 | DDC 810.8/09282dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036528

To every kid with a story inside, and to all the grown-ups who give them a pencil and encourage them to begin

E. B. W.

The Writers Dream

I hold dreams of writing

Deep inside my heart.

I want to touch peoples emotions

Using this expressive art.

I wish to stimulate contemplation

Of the joy which can partner life,

To diffuse the sorrow of others,

And help them through any strife.

This now shall be my purpose

And a crucially important goal.

For I attempt to return happiness to the spirit

And contentment to the soul.

CYNTHIA LEITICH SMITH, age 11
()

O UR STORY BEGINS with a box in a basement. Its brown and heavy and one of many marked Elissa . And its filled, to the brim, with stories from my childhood. Stories I wrote.

Going through the box is like going backward in time. The stories on top of the pile are long and typed; theyre stapled pages from an ink-jet printer, with chapter titles in funky fonts. Below that are notebooks (spiral-bound, then marble-covered), then loose pages of text I once hammered out on my dads typewriter. At the very bottom are ruled lines on yellowed paper, my six-year-old handwriting large and exact. Some stories in the box made me laugh, they were so clever. Others made me laugh because they were so bad. Is it any surprise I became a writer?

I knew I couldnt be the only one with a box in a basement. What, I wondered, did other childrens authors write when they were their readers age? Illustrators, too. What did they draw? I couldnt be the only one whod want to know. So I began to ask.

Over the past two years, Ive had the joy of talking to some of todays most-beloved childrens authors and illustrators about their early artistic endeavors. This book contains just a small sample of that childhood creativity. Some now-famous authors didnt write as kids. Some wrote or drew, but they didnt save their work. Others saved but consider their work too personal to share. Some were too busy creating something new to dig out something old. And, unfortunately, I had the space to include only a fraction of todays tremendous talent.

Even so, the collection youre about to read contains a fascinating variety of work from a range of voices, styles, backgrounds, and experiences, arranged by the age at which the works were created, from seven up through sixteen. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor wrote mysteries on used stationery during the Great Depression. Tom Angleberger planned for an epic novel about a plaice called Yodium. Rita Williams-Garcia kept a daily chronicle of her offbeat elementary school life. Thanhh Li made up stories with her mother as a girl in Vietnam, while Yuyi Morales struggled to create a truly original painting as a young teen in Mexico. These are just a few of this books poems, comics, journal entries, stories, drawings, paintings, and speeches, from different genres, different places, and different decades.