I love being involved in the characters and plot and just the whole mess of writing, it’s such a wonderful mess to me. They read Grimm’s fairy tales, the Bible storybook, all of Mark Twain’s books, Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows-and I think I probably felt that if listening to stories was so much fun, writing them would be even better. “I think I wanted to be a writer because my parents read aloud to us every night until we were about 15 years old.

They have two grown sons and four grandchildren. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland with her husband, Rex who is a speech pathologist. She sold her first book for children in 1965. Naylor worked as a teacher and an editor before she began to write full-time in 1960. She loved to make up stories and write little books when she was growing up, and sold her first story when she was 16 for $4.67. The University of Charleston awarded Phyllis Reynolds Naylor the Appalachian Medallion in 1997.Newbery Medalist Phyllis Reynolds Naylor grew up in Anderson, Indiana, and Joliet, Illinois. Send No Blessings is set in Hinton Josie’s Troubles is set in Webster Springs Boys Start the War (West Virginia Children’s Book Award, 1996) is the first in a 12-part boys versus girls series set in a fictional Buckhannon and Wrestle the Mountain is based on the Farmington coal mine disaster. Shiloh (Newbery Medal, 1992, West Virginia Children’s Book Award, 1994, and film adaptation, 1997), Shiloh Season, and Saving Shiloh, are all set in and near the Tyler County town of Friendly the beagle Shiloh is named for a nearby community. Naylor found a setting for her most successful books in the small towns and among the people of the Mountain State. Then in 1987, when awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she spent the funds traveling throughout West Virginia, talking to people, reading Goldenseal magazine, and taking notes.

Naylor and visited Grafton, Buckhannon, and Preston County, places where he and his family had lived. Her ties to West Virginia began May 26, 1960, when she married Rex V. She graduated from American University in 1963 and now lives in Bethesda, Maryland. E-WV | Phyllis Reynolds Naylor | Back to e-WV The West Virginia EncyclopediaĪuthor Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, a Newbery Medal winner and the author of more than 135 books for children and youth, was born January 4, 1933, in Anderson, Indiana.

Author phyllis reynolds naylor