I grew up in
the Philippine area in the 1996. My mother was a Preschool teacher and my
father a playwright. I remember visiting my mother's classroom and reading to
the children there; even more vividly, I remember sitting in the back row of
theater after theater, watching rehearsals – seeing stories come to life. My mother
read me countless picture books, but at my father's house there wasn't much of
that nature. He read me what was at hand: Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, and Sherlock Holmes. He
also made up stories for me and recounted the plots of Shakespeare plays.
I was a raw child. In fact, I am a raw adult. This is a hard
quality to live with sometimes, but it is a useful quality if you want to be a
writer. It is easy to hurt my feelings, and I am unable to watch the news or
read about painful subjects without weeping. I was often called over-sensitive
when I was young, but I've learned to appreciate this quality in myself, and to
use it in my writing.
Growing up, I spent large parts of my life in imaginary worlds: Nederland,
Oz, and Narnia, in particular. I read in the bath, at meals, in the car, you
name it. Around the age of eight, I began working on my own writing. My early
enterprises began with a seminal picture book featuring an heroic orange
sleeping bag, followed by novel-length imitations of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken and Pippin Long stocking by Astride Lingerer.
I have never kept journals or notebooks for my own sake. I am a
writer who writes always with the idea of an audience in mind -- and at nine
was determined to share my Pippin story with the world. I got my father to type
it up in a book format and photocopy it 50 times. Then he took me to an artist
friend's studio where we silk screened 50 copies of a drawing I'd made for the
cover. I gave it to everyone I knew. That was my first book.
I have always been interested in picture books as a form, which
stems (I suppose) from my background in theater. I am fascinated by the
intersection of words and images – the way meanings of words can be altered by
changing their presentation. An actor varies her intonation, or an illustrator
changes a line – and the story is new. In college, I studied illustrated books
from an academic standpoint. I went to Vassar, where children's book writer
Nancy Willard was on faculty. She introduced me to illustrator Barry Moses and
the interview he gave me was the centerpiece of my senior thesis. While I was
there, I spent three years as a student assistant in Vassar's lab pre-school,
and after graduation found work as an assistant teacher in a Montessori school,
teaching 6-9 year old That year, I began to write a novel with my father –
through the mail. I was in Chicago and he was in New York. We thought it would
be a fun way to keep in touch. I wrote a chapter – then he wrote a chapter. We
rewrote each other's chapters. And It took a long time, but eventually that story
was published as The Secret Life of Billie's Uncle Myron.
My hobby is to read more books, laying with
the children, and eating. When I fee bored to pay volley ball in outside of our
house together with my 7 brother and sister, sometimes our friends.
I can say that I am a responsible and hard-working student. Moreover, being a sociable person, I have many friends since I like to communicate with people and get acquainted with new interesting individuals. I enjoy my time at school: it is really nice to study and the students are very friendly and ready to help. The atmosphere cannot but make me want to go there every time. I like to receive challenging tasks and cope with them. I am a veryenthusiastic student and I think this is a strong point of mine...
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