ABOUT SARAH

I was born in Chicago, Illinois while my father was doing his residency in neurosurgery at the University of Chicago. When I was six months old, my Canadian parents packed me and my two older brothers (then two and four) into their old car and high-tailed it to Victoria, B.C., where my father became the first neurosurgeon on Vancouver Island. I have never been back to Chicago, although I hear the music scene is awesome and the art galleries are terrific.

My mother was an ardent reader—even in her last years, when glaucoma had claimed the vision in one of her eyes, she read omnivorously. When my brothers and I were growing up, she read to us every night before bed and took us to the library once a week. No wonder my brother Brian and I are writers and our older brother Rod is an English professor.

When I was fifteen I got a part-time job at Ivy's Bookshop and caught the bookselling bug. It was the perfect job for me: all books, all the time and a paycheque, too. I went back to university in my thirties, when my children were three and ten. After graduation (yes, I have an English degree) I worked as the trade book buyer at the University of Victoria Bookstore for fifteen years. I currently work as a children's book editor. Another dream job, I have to say.

I started writing reviews for the Globe and Mail in 1988 and for a while I had book columns in two local papers, the Times Colonist and Monday Magazine. In 1999, I met and became friends with Carol Shields, who invited me to submit an essay, “Mother, Interrupted,” to Dropped Threads 2, which was published in 2001. She also suggested that I consider writing children's books—so I gave it a shot (wouldn’t you?) and here I am: the author of eight books for children and working on the ninth.