Peg kehrets biography first book for children

A few months after my wedding, my dad was transferred to Fresno, California. The next winter, Carl and I drove out to Fresno to visit my parents. Delighted with the warm winter weather and the casual lifestyle, we fell in love with California, and began making plans to move there. Carl sent resumes to large dairy companies in California and a few months later he was offered a job in San Francisco.

We packed all our belongings in a U-Haul trailer, put our two cats in the car, and headed West. The cats howled all the way across the country but even their shrill distress did not dampen our enthusiasm. For years, we've kept a quote from Helen Keller taped to our refrigerator door. It says, "Life is either a grand adventure, or it is nothing.

It took some time to find a landlord who would rent to people with two cats. We finally found an apartment in Oakland. I signed up to work for a temporary employment agency and was given a series of menial jobs such as typing invoices and filing. The most interesting thing that happened during those temporary jobs was the day an earthquake struck while I was on the eighth floor of a building in downtown Oakland.

It felt as if the whole building swayed from side to side. The papers on my desk slid to the right, then to the left. It lasted only a few seconds but it scared me silly and after that I had an intense interest in earthquakes. I kept newspaper clippings about earthquakes. When earthquake survivors were interviewed on television, I made notes, jotting down quotes about their experiences.

Years later when I began writing Earthquake Terror, most of my research was already done. The reason I took only temporary jobs was that Carl and I wanted to start a family. When that didn't happen, we applied to adopt a child. A series of interviews and home visits followed. We waited impatiently, wondering if we would ever be parents to anything but cats.

Our son, Bob, came to us when we'd been married four years. I quit the temporary agency and plunged happily into full-time motherhood. Our daughter, Anne, joined us two years later. Children who have read Small Steps sometimes ask me if the day I got polio was the worst day of my life. My answer is no. The deaths of my parents were worse but the hardest day of all happened when Bob was three-and-a-half years old.

We still called him Bobby then. He liked to play with some children who lived across the street but he was not allowed to cross the street alone. Usually they came to our house to play. If he was going to their home, I walked him over and then went back in an hour or so to get him. One sunny afternoon, I'd taken Bobby across the street to play with his friends.

Then I put Anne, who was eighteen months old, to bed for a nap. I had just sat down to read the day's mail when there was a frantic pounding on my front door. As I hurried to answer it, I heard a neighbor shout, "Bobby's been hit by a truck! I rushed outside and saw my precious son lying unconscious in the street. Neighborhood kids clustered around him, staring down.

A telephone company truck was stopped nearby. I dropped to my knees on the pavement. Somehow I gathered my wits. Next I gave Carl's work number and asked someone to call him. The shaken truck driver handed me a jacket to put over Bobby. I never saw him until it was too late. I soon heard the wailing of the ambulance as it approached.

By then every neighbor who was home that day had gathered around me. One, the mother of our babysitter, offered to take care of Anne. With my heart in my throat, I climbed in the ambulance with my unconscious son. The driver took us to Children's Hospital in Oakland. Our family doctor met us there and Carl arrived soon after. He told me later that when he arrived at the hospital, he was unable to let go of the steering wheel.

In his anxiety, he had gripped the wheel so hard that his fingers were clenched too tightly to unwind. He had to work himself loose, then straighten one finger at a time. Bobby suffered a skull fracture and a concussion that day. He also permanently lost all of the hearing in his left ear. Later, I learned what had happened. Bobby and his friends had argued over a toy.

Bobby didn't want to play any more but instead of calling me as he was supposed to do if he wanted to come home, he had angrily run off to go home by himself. He dashed into the street, right into the path of the truck. I felt guilty that I had let my child play with the kids across the street. They were a large family and I knew the mother of those children didn't watch them as carefully as I watched mine; why hadn't I insisted that they come to our house?

Although everyone told me the accident wasn't my fault, I still felt that it was. To make matters worse, parents were not allowed to stay at the hospital with their children. We could visit but we had to leave at dinner time and couldn't return until the next morning. Children who enter the hospital for surgery or other planned procedures benefit from stories told to them ahead of time about what to expect at the hospital.

Bobby had no such preparation. He simply woke up hurting in an unfamiliar place and then, just when he needed his parents most, we went away, leaving him with strangers. Each time we left, Bobby screamed and cried. He stood in the crib-like hospital bed, clinging to the metal bars and sobbing. It broke my heart. On the third night, I told the doctor I thought we were doing more psychological damage than the hospital was doing good.

The doctor finally agreed to discharge Bobby providing he stay in bed except to go to the bathroom, and that he wear a helmet for those short trips. It was critical that he not get bumped in the head. I would have agreed to anything so long as I could take my boy home. We bought a helmet and checked Bobby out of the hospital. Even so, the terrifying experience left its mark.

Our cheerful, happy son came home afraid to be alone for even a few minutes. If we tiptoed out of his room while he slept, and he woke to find us gone, he immediately cried uncontrollably. He had stayed dry at night for more than a year; now he began wetting his bed again. He had nightmares and woke up screaming. We had twin beds in Bobby's room so I slept in the extra bed.

It was weeks before I could leave that room at night without making sure Carl was there to take my place in case Bobby woke up. Gradually his fears subsided, but the nightmares continued sporadically for over a year. Having survived polio, I knew that our family would get through this trauma, too, but the accident affected me profoundly. The next year, when the first anniversary of the accident was a few weeks away I began to count down the days.

I've never been especially superstitious but I was relieved when that date came and went without further tragedy. For years afterward I got chills and my heart would race whenever I heard ambulance sirens nearby. The sound instantly brought back a vision of my son lying crumpled in the street in front of our house. Bob is now a high school teacher and coach, married, with two children of his own.

This essay is the first time I've ever written about how he lost the hearing in one ear. Even though his accident was one of the most dramatic events of my life, I've never used that experience in a book. I've written about almost everything else unusual that's happened to my family changing details and embellishing the facts for fiction but so far I have not created a character who gets hit by a vehicle.

Decades later, the memories are still too painful. However, I have used my feelings from that ordeal many times as my characters experienced fear or guilt or pain. When a character stands up for what she believes, I remember how hard it was to insist that my son be discharged from the hospital before the doctor wanted to let him go.

W hen Bob and Anne were both in school, I decided to return to school, too. I enrolled at a two-year California college near my home, and I loved taking classes again. I read every assignment, studied hard, and especially liked writing reports or essays. Once again, I began to think of a career as a writer. A year after I went back to college, the company Carl worked for closed its San Francisco plant.

He was offered a job in Seattle so once again we packed up a rented truck, this time with two kids in addition to two cats, and started a new adventure in the Pacific Northwest. The local colleges considered me an out-of-state student until I had lived in Washington for one year. Out-of-state students pay higher tuition, which I couldn't afford, so I decided to skip the college degree and start writing.

Each day after the kids left for school, I carried my cup of coffee downstairs to the unfinished basement where I had my desk, and spent the day pounding away on the Smith Corona portable typewriter that had been my high school graduation gift from my parents. I wrote magazine articles and stories. I wrote light verse and short plays. Even though I knew nothing about marketing my writing, I sent these manuscripts to publishers.

All of them came back in the self-addressed, stamped envelopes that I always included. Usually a form rejection slip was enclosed. Sometimes I didn't even get that. Because I knew something was wrong with my writing but I didn't know what, I started reading "howto" books about writing. I also subscribed to two magazines for writers and I read every word of them each month.

I attended the Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference that summer, and every summer for many years. Slowly I began to learn the craft of writing. I also began targeting my markets properly. Before sending material to a magazine, I read more than one copy of that magazine. If a magazine offered writer's guidelines, I sent for them. When I wrote short stories about family problems, I submitted the stories only to magazines which published that type of story.

This seems a common sense thing to do, but thousands of writers each year make the same mistake I made at first: I sent my work to inappropriate publishers. Eventually my efforts paid off. I began selling brief magazine articles, some light verse, and an occasional short story. I wrote a two-character skit and submitted it to Contemporary Drama Service.

An editor there, Art Zapel, said that the skit was too short to publish by itself but if I wanted to write two more playlets of the same kind, he would consider publishing them as a group. I rushed downstairs to my desk. I did little else until those additional playlets were finished and in the mail. Zapel accepted them, and thus began a long partnership with Contemporary Drama Service as well as a personal friendship with Art Zapel.

I wrote more playlets, then some one-act plays, and finally full-length plays. Contemporary Drama Service published most of my work; other play publishers took the rest. While I worked on my plays, I continued to write magazine articles and stories because they provided a steady income. Most of the play publishers paid royalties annually.

My royalties depended on how many scripts were sold as well as how many times each play was produced. It was hard to budget when I only got paid once a year, especially when I never knew how big the check would be. With magazine stories, the publisher and I agreed on an amount for each story when it was accepted. Sometimes payment was made on acceptance; sometimes I didn't get paid until the story was published, but at least I knew how much was coming, and when.

For several years, I wrote one short story each week, most of which sold, then wrote plays in my "spare" time. I soon wore out the Smith-Corona. The second time I took it to the typewriter repair shop, the repairman asked me how many hours each day I used it. You need an office typewriter. I bought an IBM Selectric typewriter. It was much larger and sturdier than the portable had been, but I wore it out, too.

I'm a fast typist but my accuracy leaves something to be desired. It had always taken me hours to produce a "clean copy" of each manuscript — one with no errors. I painted a white liquid on the mistakes, waited for the liquid to dry, then typed the correct letter. I often had several errors on each page, so it was a time consuming process.

With my new self-correcting typewriter, all I had to do was backspace and then type in the right letter. I loved that typewriter! I loved it so much that when the early computers with word-processing systems became available, I refused to buy one. Writer friends urged me to get a computer, my son begged me to buy one, people who had one told me I would love working on a computer; but it took several years before I finally bought a computer.

Even then I kept the old self-correcting typewriter for a long time, just in case I decided to go back to it. I didn't, of course. After the first frustrating weeks of learning how to use the computer, I found it far faster and easier to write on than the typewriter had been. I became more careful in my revisions because I didn't have to go to all that trouble to change a word.

Peg kehrets biography first book for children

It seemed miraculous when my first noisy dot-matrix printer spit out a page of copy so much faster than I could have typed it — and without any errors. As more of my material got published, I began dreaming of writing a book. I think most writers long to publish a book, no matter what genre they work in. It was fun to go to the grocery store, browse at the magazine racks, and see a magazine containing one of my stories but each story was there for only a month or less.

Then they were gone, never to return. A book, on the other hand, lasts forever — or so I thought. Now I know that books, too, go out of print and disappear, but a book is still so much more substantial than a magazine or even a play script. I gazed at the books in my public library and at my favorite book store, and wondered if I would ever see my name on the cover of a book.

You'll never know if you don't try, I told myself. My first effort was a mystery novel; it never sold. Next I tried a nonfiction book; it didn't get published, either. I couldn't help but think how many magazine stories I might have written and been paid for in the time it took me to write those two books, yet I continued to work on book-length material.

The dream had become far more important than the money. I wrote a collection of original wedding vows, intended for people who were planning a marriage ceremony. After several large publishers turned it down, saying they didn't see where it would fit on their lists, I sent the manuscript to my editor friend, Art Zapel. I knew that Contemporary Drama Service also had a book division, Meriwether Publishing, that published dramatic material for schools and churches.

I thought perhaps my "Vows of Love and Marriage" would be of interest to the church market. Art agreed, and my first book was published. Then I hung up and burst into tears. That morning remains one of the high points of my life. It impacted my entire way of life. Soon after Deadly Stranger was published, a teacher asked me to speak at her school.

I was astonished. Kehret briefly attended the University of Minnesota before marrying in Children soon followed and she lived the busy life of mother and homemaker, also volunteering for the Humane Society. Kehret began writing in the early s, spurred on by further work in community theater as well as her interest in research of various sorts.

She began selling magazine stories, eventually logging over of them before turning her hand to lengthier works. There followed one-act and full-length plays, including the award-winning Spirit! Her initial juvenile title, Winning Monologs for Young Actors, appeared in and was followed by her first novel for young people, Deadly Stranger. The story of a kidnapping, this novel was dubbed a "cliffhanger" by a Kirkus Reviews contributor.

Another popular early title from Kehret is Nightmare Mountain, a thriller involving young Molly and her visit to her aunt's ranch at the foot of Mt. The fun visit turns into a nightmare when her Aunt Karen falls into a coma and three valuable llamas are stolen. Booklist 's Denise Wilms observed that Kehret delivers "a fast-paced mystery-adventure tale with a heroine who, when forced to deal with disaster, shows courage and resourcefulness.

One of Kehret's personal favorites, Cages, allowed her to write about the Humane Society, for which she has a special passion. When young Kit—who has an alcoholic stepfather and a mother in denial—gives in to a momentary urge and shoplifts a bracelet, she sets off a chain of events that has lasting repercussions in her life. Caught, she is sentenced to community service at the Humane Society.

There she falls in love with the homeless dogs and learns lessons about personal responsibility and facing her problems. As Andrea Davidson noted in Voice of Youth Advocates, the book "will appeal to young teen readers interested in getting out of the 'cages' represented by their problems. Meisner concluded that Kit's determination to set herself free from "the cages of alcohol enablement, jealousy, and, ultimately, the secret of her crime make her an appealing protagonist.

Kehret's best-selling Terror at the Zoo, is the story of an overnight campout at the zoo which goes very wrong. This time around, they help with a Halloween haunted-house project at the local historical museum, only to discover that the house really is haunted. Overcoming her fear of ghosts, Ellen helps discover who is stealing from the museum's collection.

Donna Houser noted in Voice of Youth Advocates that this "fun, fast-paced novel can be read in an evening. Ellen and Corey appear again in Danger at the Fair, "this time sharing a thrill-a-minute adventure set at a county fair," according to Zvirin. Atop the Ferris wheel, Corey spies a pickpocket at work, but when Corey subsequently trails the thief, he is trapped inside the "River of Fear" ride.

Zvirin concluded that the mystery-suspense components of the story, plus "a pair of enthusiastic, heroic, quite likable" protagonists, all added up to a book "that won't stay on the shelf for long. The former title is a departure for Kehret, a comic novel about Peter's money-making ventures gone wrong. Pete the Cat series [ edit ].

Drama [ edit ]. Nonfiction [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Small steps : the year I got polio. Morton Grove, Ill. ISBN OCLC Peg Kehret. Retrieved Pioneer Drama Service. Kirkus Reviews. School Library Journal. Further reading [ edit ]. External links [ edit ].