Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Zilpha Keatley Snyder was born in Lemoore, CA on May 11th to William Keatley, a former horse rancher, and Dessa Jepson, a schoolteacher. Their second child, she taught herself to read by listening to her mother’s lessons for Zilpha’s older sister, Elizabeth. At the age of four, Zilpha could read the newspaper on her own. By the age of eight, she had decided to become a writer. She attended Whittier College, where she met her future husband, Larry Snyder. After graduation, she taught upper elementary grades for several years. She attributes he later success as a children’s writer in part to her experiences with children as a teacher.

Season of Ponies (1964), was the first book she wrote and submitted to a publisher. It took three revisions before being accepted, but she was never to look back after that. She has since published at least 38 books, many of them inspired by the stories her parents told her when she was a child, and many inspired by the extensive travel she and her husband have done throughout the world. She has said that she writes for joy, and her imagined audience is the 10- and11-year-olds she used to teach and read to. She explains her success as a children’s author in part by noting three characteristics she shares with children: optimism, curiosity, and a freewheeling imagination.

Among her published works are The Castle Court Kids series (1995) and three Newbery Honor Books: The Egypt Game (1967), The Headless Cupid (1971), and The Witches of Worm (1972).