MARY POPE OSBORNE is an ardent preach and assistant of children ’ south literacy, and the award-winning writer of more than 100 books for children and young adults, including novels, retellings of mythology and folklore, picture books, biographies, and mysteries. From 1993–1997, Mary served as president of the Authors Guild, the state ’ s leading arrangement for published authors. She has traveled extensively in the U.S. and abroad, visiting schools and speaking on issues related to children ’ randomness literacy .
Mary spoke at the UN regarding the importance of worldwide literacy and was profiled on NBC ’ s Rock Center with Brian Williams for her retain efforts. Mary ‘s personal contributions through her Gift of Books Program have placed over one million books in the hands of underserved children .
The godhead of the Magic Tree House series, Mary is besides co-author of the companion Magic Tree House Fact Trackers series with her husband, WILL OSBORNE, and her baby, NATALIE POPE BOYCE. Mary is active on Twitter and loves to connect with readers, early readers, teachers, and parents. She resides in Great Barrington, Massachusetts with Will and their two dogs, little Bear and Captain Wilson .
In Her Own Words
I grew up in the military. By the time I was fifteen I had lived in Oklahoma, Austria, Florida, and four unlike united states army posts in Virginia and North Carolina. Moving was never traumatic for me, partially, I think, because I had very close and loving relationships with my parents, my duplicate brother, my younger buddy, and my older sister.
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When my dad retired to a humble city in North Carolina, I distillery craved the venture and changing scenery of our military life. miraculously, one day I found these things, literally only a block away — at the local community field. From then on, I spent about every waking hour after school there, either acting or working backstage. When I stepped from the cheery street into that musty-smelling, dark fiddling field, all things seemed possible .
From College to New York City
I went on to study drama at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In my junior year, I discovered an even greater kingdom of adventure and changing scenery : the worldly concern of mythology and comparative religion. sol I became a religion major and learned deoxyadenosine monophosphate a lot as I could about other cultures .
After graduating from college in the early 1970s, I lived an intensely varied life. For a while I camped in a cave on the island of Crete. then I joined up with a little ring of european young people heading to “ The East. ” We traveled overland in a caravan of decrepit vans through sixteen asian countries, including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal .
We closely lost our lives, inaugural in an earthquake in northern Afghanistan and then a rioting in Kabul. My stumble came to an abrupt stop in Kathmandu when I got blood poisoning.
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During the two weeks I spent in a missionary hospital there, I read all of the Tolkien trilogy. I would sleep, read, and look out the windows at the Himalayas. To this day, my journey to “ The East ” is tangled up in my mind with Frodo ’ second adventures. After I returned home and recovered from my illness, I promptly headed back into the real number populace. I worked as a window dresser in Carmel, California, as a medical adjunct in Monterey, California, and as a russian travel adviser in Washington, D.C. One night in Washington I attended the first step of a musical about Jesse James. From the balcony I fell in sexual love with Will Osborne, the actor/musician act Jesse. I loved his boots and his white cowboy hat ; I loved how he sang and strummed the guitar. A year late, in New York City, we were married .
thereafter, when I wasn ’ metric ton on the road with Will, I worked as a wait in Greenwich Village, taught acting classes in a harbor dwelling in the Bronx, was a bartender in Broadway theaters, and had a job as an assistant editor for a children ’ s magazine .
I Begin to Write
then one day, out of the blue, I began writing a report about an eleven-year-old female child in the South. The girl was a lot like me, and many of the incidents in the narrative were similar to happenings in my childhood. The foremost draft was artlessly written, but it must have communicated something to an editor, because soon after I finished, it became a young pornographic fresh called Run, Run arsenic fast as You Can. ultimately I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.
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now more than thirty years and a hundred books later, I feel I ’ m one of the most fortunate people on earth. I ’ ve written picture books, biographies, mysteries, novels, retellings of Greek mythology, Norse mythology, medieval stories, mermaid tales, and American improbable tales. I ’ ve written a book on the world religions and a series based on Homer ’ randomness Odyssey. But the most fun I ’ ve always had in my writing liveliness has been taking journeys through time in the Magic Tree House .
I ’ ve now published 55 Magic Tree House fabrication books. ( My husband and my sister Natalie Pope Boyce write the fantastic nonfiction companion books. ) I ’ ve traveled with Jack and Annie to meet Mozart in Vienna, Louis Armstrong in New Orleans, Lady Gregory in Ireland, and Charles Dickens in Victorian, England .
Writing is a miracle. You can travel anywhere in the world, to any time and any home — and still be home in time for dinner !