Quiet! You're Invisible

Margaret Meacham grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city of bridges, steep hills and steel mills. Today, as a children's writer, she visits schools regularly to talk to the kids about books and writing. Invariably the kids ask, "What made you decide to be a writer?" She likes to them that I decided I wanted to be a writer way back when I was in second grade. She thought then how wonderful it would be to be able to create characters who seemed as real to her as the kids sitting right next to her, and what a miracle it was that these authors could create whole worlds with nothing more than little black marks on a piece of white paper. It seemed like a miracle to her then, and today, after more than two decades of writing, it still does.She lives now in Brooklandville, Maryland, a small town just north of Baltimore, with her husband, John, a good- natured man who doesn't seem to mind my piles of books and papers, or the vacant stare she sometimes gives him when lost in a story. They have three children, Pete, 26, Jen, 23, and Katy, 19, all of whom have brought unimaginable joy as well as large helpings of anxiety, pride, worry, hope, fear, and of course, countless ideas for stories. They have two dogs, a Border Collie named Panda, and an Australian Shepard named Sachem. Panda often keeps her company in her office, but Sachem has doggie ADHD, and so is banished. They also have an ancient cat named Charlie who looks everyday of his 21 years.She still lives on a hill, but instead of doing my dreaming and imaging in a Buckeye tree, nowadays she does it in her office in front of the computer, and when she's lucky, her imaginings turn into stories, which she hopes will help another child somewhere to survive second grade.Meacham, Margaret is the author of 'Quiet! You're Invisible', published 2001 under ISBN 9780823416516 and ISBN 0823416518.