Patricia Reilly Giff
Patricia Reilly Giff
Patricia Reilly Giffis an American author and teacher. She was educated at Marymount College, where she was awarded a B.A. degree, and St. John's University, where she earned an M.A. and Hofstra University, where she was awarded a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters. After spending some twenty years as a full-time teacher, she began writing, specializing in children's literature. Giff now resides in Trumbull, Connecticut, along with her husband Jim and their three children. Giff's...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth26 April 1935
CountryUnited States of America
I loved teaching. It was my world. I only left because I was overwhelmed with three careers - teaching, writing, and my family.
When I sit and talk with a person, I'm not always paying attention. I'm looking at the person and saying, 'What is it about his or her life that appeals to me?
Do you all have a living room floor or a bedroom floor? Then you can write a book.
What inspired me to become an author? I think it was the snow in New York. I looked out the window and I said, 'Well, I have to get dressed every morning to go to teach, but if I write a book, I can stay home in my bathrobe, eat candy corn.'
I cannot outline. I do not know what the next thing is going to happen in the book until it comes out of my fingers.
Outside of family, writing is essential. To me, it's like breathing.
The reasons kids get into trouble in one way or another is because - Who ever told them they were special?
Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.
All of my books are based in some way on my personal experiences, or the experiences of members of my family, or the stories kids would tell me in school.
Sometimes when I visit schools, kids will interview me for the school newspaper. They ask me questions and my answers tend to go on and on, and they try to write down everything I'm saying as quickly as they can. And one day, a kid holds up her hand and said, 'Do you think you could just answer 'yes' or 'no?' Aren't kids wonderful?
To me, family is everything. I want children to realize how important their families are and what a support system a family is.
I want to see children curled up with books, 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.
I have no special talent, you know. I never took a writing course before I began to write.
Everything in my life affects my writing. There are no separate parts of my life.