Deborah Hopkinson and YOU (The Author and YOU)

Award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson grew up in Massachusetts and after college moved to Hawaii where she worked as a college development administrator while nurturing her writing career. In this 9th book of the Author and YOU series, Hopkinson shares her curiosity and the manner in which that curiosity leads to investigation and research and then to her many fiction and nonfiction stories. The author discusses each of her books, providing the back story, the impetus for the book, and the research activities that brought each of the stories to young readers. The particular emphasis of this book is the writing of books for young readers within a historical context and how to use primary source documents in that effort. The author has a well-developed Web site with lesson plans for her books already in place. Her books are particularly valuable in school libraries as many are set in a historical context. She also has several biographies in her portfolio and is well known in that context to school librarians. Grades K-6.