Horner Doogie - Kid authors: true tales of childhood from famous writers

E verybody loves a good storyand we all know that a well-told story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is a book about how the stories of sixteen famous authors began.

Some of them knew from very early on that they were going to be writers. Edgar Allan Poe, the legendary author of The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart, used to recite poetry and dress up as a ghost to frighten grown-ups at parties.

And the poet Langston Hughes spent hours in his local library, reading collections of mythology, verse, and African American history.

Other kid authors had to overcome obstacles on the road to success. Laura Ingalls Wilder, the writer of Little House on the Prairie, grew up on the frontier, where she faced harsh winters and attacks by locusts.

And then there is J. K. Rowling. Long before she wrote the best-selling Harry Potter novels, she was just another kid in middle school trying to make decent grades and fend off bullies. Believe it or not, she often found herself getting into fights! She took comfort in writing stories about feisty heroines who fought back against evil villains.

And finally we have Jeff Kinney, whose most formidable foes were his three siblings. Every morning, Jeff and his siblings found themselves in a heated competition to determine who would use the bathroom first. Jeff took the wimpy moments of his childhood and turned them into Diary of a Wimpy Kid, one of the most successful childrens book series of all time.

We all have a story to tell, and whether or not you grow up to become a great writer, all those stories start in the same place: childhood. Some kids are born storytellers, others learned to take their unique experiences and turn them into tales that would entertain and inspire. We know how their stories ended, but how much do you really know about how their stories began? Were going back to the beginning to find out!

It started with a monkey invasion, continued with a baby kidnapping, and ended with a spider attack. J. R. R. Tolkiens time in South Africa was brief, but it left him with vivid memories to last a lifetime.

If youve ever read The Lord of the Rings, you may know about Shelob, the giant evil spider who guards the entrance to Mordor. But did you know there was a real spider in Tolkiens lifeand that it nearly put an end to the great storytellers career before it even began?

John Ronald Reuel Tolkienor Ronald, as he was calledwas born in Bloemfontein, the capital of the South African province then known as the Orange Free State. But Ronald always thought of himself as English. His parents, Arthur and Mabel Tolkien, had moved to South Africa from England only the year before, after Arthur got a job at a bank.

Ronalds father was often away on business, leaving his son in the care of his mother and servants. The first summer Ronald spent in his new hometown was one of the hottest that anyone could remember. As a baby, Ronald had to wear frilly white dressescalled pinaforesto keep cool. In letters to relatives, his mother boasted that he looked like an elf or a fairy.

Even worse than the heat were the bugs and beasts. Flies buzzed about constantly, and locusts devoured crops in the fields. A family of wild monkeys lived next door. One day, a monkey vaulted the fence and rampaged through the Tolkiens garden, shredding three of Ronalds pinafores hanging on the clothesline.

Then, to make matters even worse, baby Ronald got kidnapped!

Well, sort of. Some might say he was just borrowed for a while. Apparently, a servant named Isaak was so taken by the adorable Tolkien infant that he took Ronald to show him to the people of his village.

After spending the night with Isaak and his family, Ronald was back in his crib the next morning, unharmed. Although he always claimed he had no memory of the incident, as an adult, J. R. R. Tolkien often wrote about characters who get captured or kidnapped.

One childhood memory did stick with Ronald forever. You could even say that it left quite an impression on himwith its teeth.

One very hot summer day, as he was just learning to walk, Ronald was strolling through the garden when he stumbled on a hairy, black, eight-legged creature the size of a dinner plate. Ronald had no idea what it was, but it looked mean. He would later learn that it was called the Hercules Baboon Tarantula and it was one of the largest, heaviest, and rarest spiders in the world.