PATRICIA HERMES BIOGRAPHY I BOOKS I PRESENTATIONS I BOOK ORDERING
But there was one thing different about me: Although I loved to read and loved to write - and was pretty good at both - I hated school. I hated it, not because school was too difficult, nor too scary, nor because I was lonely there, nor any of the things kids sometimes felt then and still feel today. No, I hated it because it was this: Just. Plain. Boring.
I was an early reader, but in school, I had to read only what everyone else was reading. Yet I was able to read through those stories quickly and wanted to move on. But I was not allowed. No, I was made to read the story over again as no teacher believed I could read as fast as I did. But in spite of such rules, I continued to read, reading ahead, not just school books, not just children's books, but everything I could get my hands on - adult books, library books, comic books, magazines, cereal boxes, toothpaste tubes. If there was print on it, I read it.
Now, I would like to say that the reason I was such an early reader is because I was so brilliant. But that is not at all the truth. Rather, the reason is this: When I was very small, about six years old, I spent much of an entire year in a hospital with a heart disorder. Back then, parents couldn't stay with their children in hospitals. Also, in hospitals, there were no play rooms, no toys, no computer or video games, nor was there really much TV. So what was a little kid stuck in bed to do? My parents brought me books - and I became a reader.
As soon as I could read, I began to write. I created an entire world for myself in the stories I wrote, and in the stories I read. I discovered the book, The Secret Garden, and there I found a little kid who was a lot like me. Her name was Mary, and her parents had abandoned her through death. (Mine hadn't abandoned me, but I felt abandoned in the hospital.) In the big lonely house where Mary lived she found another lonely child, an angry boy who was confined to bed. (Again, like me!) They became friends, and discovered together a secret garden. How I longed to go to that garden with them. How I longed to be able to get out of bed and play as they did. And so I played inside the covers of that book. I became convinced that The Secret Garden had been written just for me! And that is how I had made the connection to a book.
Now, of course, I did get better, and returned home to family and friends, though that illness was just the first of several that I coped with in childhood. But I learned something back there. I learned that I could find my escape in books - and in writing.
Eventually, I grew up, and knew that what I really wanted to do with my life was become a teacher. Maybe I decided that because I thought I could connect with children, especially with children who were as bored with school as I had been. Or maybe I just wanted to share my own experience with books and reading. At any rate, I did become a teacher, taught for three years, and then began raising a family.
I have five children, four sons first, and the youngest, a daughter. Then, one day, when the children were older, I returned to teaching. It was then that I decided that I didn't want to teach anymore. Teaching was a lot like raising children, and I had already raised five of my own. What I really wanted to do was write. I enrolled in a writing course, and began working seriously on my writing. I wrote, and had published, essays and nonfiction for adults. And I then began writing books for children and young people. My first book, What If They Knew, is based - loosely -- on my own experience, that of being a child who had to learn to cope with a disease. Since that book was published in 1980, I have written over thirty-five more books. Hard work? Yes. Fun? Definitely.
So where do I get my ideas for my stories? Obviously, from my own life, my childhood, and that of my children. But ideas are everywhere. Authors are spies! I go to schools to speak, and I spy on kids. I listen to them talk, look at what they wear, study their mannerism and gestures and figures of speech. One of my books came about from my daughter telling me about a boy in her class who was eating flies! Some of my books, even the historical novels, draw many of the characters and emotions from my own childhood. Because I have learned something. I have learned that the lives of children when I was growing up, and the lives of children centuries ago, and the lives of children today - are not all that different. Yes, the details of kids' lives change - a lot! But the essence of childhood remains the same. The same hopes and longings and laughter and pranks and fun that are hard-wired inside the hearts and souls of kids today, are much the same as what has always been inside children. With my writing, I try to reach that core, that center. And when kids write and tell me, "I loved your book. You know just how I feel!" - then I know that maybe -- just maybe -- I have succeeded in touching that core.
AWARDS: California Young Reader Medal Iowa Teen award Hawaii Nene Award Pine Tree Book Award (MI) Children's Choice Awards Smithsonian Notable Boo C.S. Lewis Honor NY Library/Best Book for the Teen Years |
When
I was a child (a thousand years ago,) I was teased a lot like
many other kids. I loved to play, especially outdoors and especially
with my dogs. I loved the many cats that inhabited our home. Loved
my little sister - sometimes. Alternately hated and loved my big
sister. I didn't understand my only brother at all, but loved
him most of the time. Loved climbing trees, playing in creeks,
roller-skating and ice skating, playing in the sewers (yes,really,
that's what this New York kid did one entire spring!), swimming
at Rockaway in the ocean in summers. (And nearly drowned, too.)
All in all, I was a pretty
normal, ordinary kid.