SHARON CREECH - BIOGRAPHY
Sharon Creech has written twenty books for young people and is published in over twenty languages. Her books have received awards in both the U.S. and abroad including the John Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor, Britain’s Carnegie Medal, two Christopher Awards, the Sequoyah Award, and many state awards.
Sharon was born in Ohio, and before beginning her writing career, she taught English for fifteen years in England and Switzerland.
Sharon Creech is married to a headmaster, whose current position is in Switzerland. When they are not in Switzerland, they return to their home in Maine.
THE BOY ON THE PORCH
The Boy on the Porch is about a young boy who is found asleep on the farmhouse porch of a young couple. He is unable to speak or write and cannot explain his history. What kind of person would leave their child with strangers? All they know is that they have been chosen to care for this boy. As their connection to him grows, they embrace his exuberant spirit and talents, and he thrives in their care. Can this last?
AN INTERVIEW WITH SHARON CREECH
Did you always want to be a writer?
Yes, but I also wanted to be a teacher, a painter, a singer, a dancer, an ice skater, and many other things. It is hard to do all of those things well, and so I chose teaching and then writing for my careers. Painting and kayaking and hiking and dancing and singing and ice skating are things-I-do-sometimes-and-not-always-so-well-but-always-with-exuberance.
Where do your ideas come from? Do you write about your own experiences?
The seeds for ideas swirl in the air around all of us. I might read a poem that inspires me, or see a photo of someone who appears lost or joyful, or hear a song, or remember something or some place that seems to want its story told. A trip my family took when I was twelve evolved into a story of an entirely different family in Walk Two Moons. Some stories spring out of my own experiences and some are woven around people or situations that just seem interesting to me, and so I write to explore them.
Why did you change your focus from writing adult books to writing young people’s books?
It was a natural progression. After writing two books about adults, the voice of a younger character emerged (May Lou Finney in Absolutely Normal Chaos), and that was so fun to explore that I did another with a young narrator: Salamanca in Walk Two Moons. I’ve enjoyed exploring those worlds so much that I have continued to write about young people who are on that cusp of childhood and young adulthood, when so much is possible.
How did it feel when you heard your first young people’s novel won a Newbery Medal?
(Walk Two Moons was my second young people’s novel, but the first to come out in the U.S.) How did it feel? Completely and totally shocking and amazing and wonderful and terrifying and astounding, all at once. I was unfamiliar with the Newbery Medal or its traditions, and so I did not understand the caller at first. I thought it might be one of my brothers playing a joke. I also did not know how many medals were given out each year, but when I learned that only one book was chosen for the one gold medal, I cried. I wondered how they found my book in the vast sea of new books published each year. How did they find my one little book? It was a ‘great, unexpected’ gift.* (Side note: *One of my recent books is The Great Unexpected, in which something ‘great’ and ‘unexpected’ happens to two young orphans.)
What is your favorite book from the ones you wrote and why?
You have probably heard this from other writers, but it is too hard to choose one favorite. Each is a favorite for different reasons, and each represents a year or more of my life, when I lived and breathed every scene in that book.
What are you working on now?
I’ve recently finished the next novel, Moo, which will be published in September 2016. Yes, there is a cow in it. And I’ve just begun what will probably be the next book after that. No title yet, but it does have sheep in it. I am definitely being influenced by living in Maine, near a farm that raises cows and sheep.
What is your all time favorite quote?
A thousand, thousand words and phrases swirl in my head, so many of them favorites, and the favorites change daily. But for today, here is one simple word that is pinned to the wall above my desk: Listen.
