About Me

I did not have the kind of childhood most people would choose to write about. It was happy and uneventful, with only the occasional bump in the night to keep me on my toes. In my spare time, however, I often imagined taking part in breathtaking adventures – sometimes as myself and other times as Popeye, Robin Hood, or Superman. I always liked to make up stories, especially lying in bed at night just before I fell asleep.

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It was not until I was twenty that I actually took up creative writing. One of my favorite parts of the process was imagining myself in various characters' shoes, even if those characters – dragons, for example – didn't wear shoes at all. A year later, in 1975, I graduated from Hamilton College and began a six-month internship at the New York Times Book Review. Three months after it ended, my first book, A Big Day for Scepters, was accepted.

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Since then I have been a full-time writer for children. I married my wife, Joan, in 1984, and we settled in my hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts. Our two sons, Andrew and Peter, are now all grown up. Andrew and his wife Cheryl live in Los Angeles while Peter and his wife Nicole live nearby in Lexington with our three grandsons. We see them all as much as we can.

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When I feel like I've spent enough time hunched over my computer, I like to play tennis badly and read books written by other people.