Sue Alexander
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At an early age Sue Alexander learned to attract other children’s interest and approval by telling stories. Her passion for storytelling and her understanding of the emotional ups and downs of childhood have led her to write twenty-six books for children to date, notable for their appeal and variety. Alexander is also important for her pivotal role in the growth of an extraordinary international organization, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). At the cost of her own creative writing time, for more than twenty-five years she devoted countless hours to nurturing the group as it grew from three members to over twelve thousand, because, she says, “I was helped... It’s a giving back.”
Born August 20, 1933 in Tucson, Arizona, daughter of Jack M. and Edith Pollock Ratner, she moved to Los Angeles with her family when she was a year old and to Chicago when she was five. Small and uncoordinated for her age, Alexander, influenced by her mother, became a passionate reader. Gradually she used the stories she read, and some she made up, to amuse herself and sometimes others. She says this stage of her life is reflected in her award-winning chapter book, Lila on the Landing (1987) which “was a painful book to write” but let her make peace with the hurt of feeling different and being left out.
Her family life was more satisfying. She, her younger brother and her parents would go flying with her father, an avid pilot. She went with her grandfather to the Jewish markets and neighborhoods. She haunted book stores. Watching a revival of The Desert Song, Alexander was fascinated with the Bedouins on stage. Years later, she used that background in one of her most acclaimed books, Nadia The Willful (1983), a story she wrote to deal with the pain of her brother’s death. Nadia, a young Bedouin girl, disobeys her father’s command not to mention the death of his lost son, her beloved brother. As Nadia finds people with whom to talk about Hamed, she keeps his memory alive and her father ultimately learns that no one is dead if they are not forgotten.
Alexander planned to become a journalist, but while at Northwestern University she changed her major to psychology, which she says helped give her the understanding to make the characters in her stories more real. In her senior year, she left school to marry, and her first child, Glenn David, was born in 1956. When the marriage ended, Alexander moved to Los Angeles, where her parents were then living. She married Joel Alexander on November 29, 1959 and the couple had two children, Marc Jeffry and Stacey Joy.
Alexander had continued to write but it was not until the death of her mother in 1967 that she seriously focused on polishing her craft, determined to “do something with my life that would have pleased my mother...” Her first stories were published in children’s magazines and she reviewed children’s books regularly for the Los Angeles Times. Though Alexander had not yet published a book herself, it was at this time she became a charter member and active board member of the newly formed SCBW (later SCBWI), an involvement that over the years was to help educate and encourage hundreds of aspiring writers like herself.
When her daughter could find no suitable skits to put on with friends, Alexander wrote some, remembering her own imaginative youthful playlets, and Scholastic published Small Plays for You and A Friend in 1973. Alexander’s fourth book, Witch, Goblin and Sometimes Ghost (1976), a book she filled with “tender friendships and lovable foibles,” brought her critical notice and a wider audience of enthusiastic young readers. By popular demand, she revisited these lovable spooky characters several times. She also wrote two more play books, Small Plays for Special Days (1977) and Whatever Happened to Uncle Albert? And Other Puzzling Plays (1980). Other popular Alexander books are the “World Famous Muriel” series about a
Born August 20, 1933 in Tucson, Arizona, daughter of Jack M. and Edith Pollock Ratner, she moved to Los Angeles with her family when she was a year old and to Chicago when she was five. Small and uncoordinated for her age, Alexander, influenced by her mother, became a passionate reader. Gradually she used the stories she read, and some she made up, to amuse herself and sometimes others. She says this stage of her life is reflected in her award-winning chapter book, Lila on the Landing (1987) which “was a painful book to write” but let her make peace with the hurt of feeling different and being left out.
Her family life was more satisfying. She, her younger brother and her parents would go flying with her father, an avid pilot. She went with her grandfather to the Jewish markets and neighborhoods. She haunted book stores. Watching a revival of The Desert Song, Alexander was fascinated with the Bedouins on stage. Years later, she used that background in one of her most acclaimed books, Nadia The Willful (1983), a story she wrote to deal with the pain of her brother’s death. Nadia, a young Bedouin girl, disobeys her father’s command not to mention the death of his lost son, her beloved brother. As Nadia finds people with whom to talk about Hamed, she keeps his memory alive and her father ultimately learns that no one is dead if they are not forgotten.
Alexander planned to become a journalist, but while at Northwestern University she changed her major to psychology, which she says helped give her the understanding to make the characters in her stories more real. In her senior year, she left school to marry, and her first child, Glenn David, was born in 1956. When the marriage ended, Alexander moved to Los Angeles, where her parents were then living. She married Joel Alexander on November 29, 1959 and the couple had two children, Marc Jeffry and Stacey Joy.
Alexander had continued to write but it was not until the death of her mother in 1967 that she seriously focused on polishing her craft, determined to “do something with my life that would have pleased my mother...” Her first stories were published in children’s magazines and she reviewed children’s books regularly for the Los Angeles Times. Though Alexander had not yet published a book herself, it was at this time she became a charter member and active board member of the newly formed SCBW (later SCBWI), an involvement that over the years was to help educate and encourage hundreds of aspiring writers like herself.
When her daughter could find no suitable skits to put on with friends, Alexander wrote some, remembering her own imaginative youthful playlets, and Scholastic published Small Plays for You and A Friend in 1973. Alexander’s fourth book, Witch, Goblin and Sometimes Ghost (1976), a book she filled with “tender friendships and lovable foibles,” brought her critical notice and a wider audience of enthusiastic young readers. By popular demand, she revisited these lovable spooky characters several times. She also wrote two more play books, Small Plays for Special Days (1977) and Whatever Happened to Uncle Albert? And Other Puzzling Plays (1980). Other popular Alexander books are the “World Famous Muriel” series about a
Books By Sue Alexander
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