Creech sharon biography of michael

I was born in South Euclid, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and grew up there with my noisy and rowdy family: my parents Ann and Arvel , my sister Sandy , and my three brothers Dennis, Doug, and Tom. For a fictional view of what it was like growing up in my family, see Absolutely Normal Chaos. In that book, the brothers even have the same names as my own brothers.

Our house was not only full of us Creeches, but also full of friends and visiting relatives. In the summer, we usually took a trip, all of us piled in a car and heading out to Wisconsin or Michigan or, once, to Idaho. The five-day trip out to Idaho when I was twelve had a powerful effect on me: what a huge and amazing country! I had no idea then that thirty-some years later, I would recreate that trip in a book called Walk Two Moons.

One other place we often visited was Quincy, Kentucky, where my cousins lived and still live on a beautiful farm, with hills and trees and swimming hole and barn and hayloft.

Sharon Creech is best known for her Newbery Award winning novel, Walk Two Moons.

I loved Quincy so much that it has found its way into many of my books—transformed into Bybanks, Kentucky. Bybanks also makes a brief appearance by reference, but not by name in The Wanderer. When I was young, I wanted to be many things when I grew up: a painter, an ice skater, a singer, a teacher, and a reporter. It soon became apparent that I had little drawing talent, very limited tolerance for falling on ice, and absolutely no ability to stay on key while singing.

It was in college, when I took literature and writing courses, that I became intrigued by story-telling. Later, I was a teacher high school English and writing in England and in Switzerland. While teaching great literature, I learned so much about writing: about what makes a story interesting and about techniques of plot and characterization and point of view.

I started out writing novels for adults: The Recital and Nickel Malley were both written and published while I was living in England these books were published in England only and are now out of print. But the next book was Absolutely Normal Chaos, and ever since that book I have written mainly about young people.