Who Wrote That?
Featuring Patricia Reilly Giff
Published in California Kids!, February 2002 and Gainesville Family Magazine, August 2002

As a girl, Patricia Reilly Giff read Little Women, The Secret Garden, and The Black Stallion. Her father read to her from Hiawatha and Evangeline. Her sister grabbed books out of her hands to get her attention, and Giff wanted to write from the moment she started reading. In college, Giff studied Keats, Poe, and Pope and their genius overwhelmed her. Who was she to attempt a book of her own?

Luckily, Giff’s husband stepped in. One snowy, sleety winter day in New York, as Giff prepared to go to school to teach reading, she said to Jim, “If I wrote books, I wouldn’t have to go to school today.” When Giff returned home from teaching, Jim had torn down a wall between two closets in their kitchen creating a new office for Giff. She’s been writing ever since.

“I love the physical act of writing. . .I love to be at my desk, or in the summer, in my gazebo. . .I didn’t start writing until 40, so I’m sorry I missed out on a lot of good writing time.”

After 60 books, including eight series, story ideas come easily to Giff. “It’s being able to put them all together that’s hard.” Usually, Giff starts with a person. “Character is everything. If you don’t have a flesh and blood character you’re rooting for, the book is so wooden.” Next, Giff puts the person in a place and gives him/her a problem. From there, the plot flows.

Giff enjoys choosing the setting for each book. “For writers, that’s a nugget so often overlooked.” She uses places that fascinate her. For Nory Ryan’s Song (Delacorte, 2000) it is Ireland during the Great Hunger. Six of Giff’s eight grandparents lived through the potato blight of 1845, and she wanted to figure out what they went through. For her Newbery Honor Book, Lily’s Crossing (Delacorte, 1997), and All the Way Home (Delacorte, 2001) the setting is Brooklyn. “My father and mother grew up in Brooklyn. I was born in Brooklyn. My husband grew up in Brooklyn. It’s a super memory place for me.” Pictures of Hollis Woods (Delacorte, 2002) borrows the woods where Giff’s mother spent many years, and the house on the Delaware River she particularly loved.

Giff uses many personal stories in her books. Mariel, the main character in All the Way Home, is a polio survivor like Giff. Although Giff had a mild case of polio that wasn’t actually diagnosed until years later, she vividly remembers the fear and uncertainty surrounding the disease. “That was a very scary time. . .No one knew where polio came from. I lost two friends, and the boy around the corner was paralyzed from polio. . .We weren’t allowed to go to the beach or go out in crowds.”

Lily in Lily’s Crossing is about the same age as Giff was in 1944. Like Lily, Giff grew up in St. Albans and visited Rockaway Beach in the summer. She remembers the searchlights and convoys of World War II. “The whole background of the story is real. . .It’s my background.”

Her series books come from ideas her many students gave her during almost 20 years of teaching. “I had worked with so many children who had terrible problems that I wanted to make them laugh.” Giff believes in making each ordinary child feel special.

“I always start each day by writing. It’s like breathing to me.” Typically, Giff writes in her Weston, Connecticut home for two hours in the morning and returns to bed for a decadent breakfast-in-bed. She writes the rest of the morning, takes a break, and then finishes the afternoon with her latest project.

“I want to see children curled up with a book finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people’s thoughts. I want them to make the connection that books are people’s stories, that writing is talking on paper, and I want them to write their own stories. I’d like my books to provide that connection for them.”

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