Cynthia rylant author biography essay

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Cynthia Rylant

Cynthia Rylant was born on June 6, 1954 in Hopewell, Virginia. Her parents had an unhappy marriage and were divorced when she was four years old. Rylant is her mother's maiden name. She has written about her life in her autobiography, But I'll Be Back Again. Her mother took Cynthia to live with her grandparents in Cool Ridge, West Virginia. It is her grandparents' house she remembers in When I Was Young in the Mountains. She lived with her grandparents until she was eight while her mother went to nursing school. The house had no electricity or running water. Cynthia never traveled far from home since the family had no car. She and her mother then moved to Beaver in southern West Virginia. Her grandparents were proud people and she has never forgotten her grandfather's advice, "Always do the best you can with what you've got."
Living in a poor area of Appalachia, Cynthia had no real idea of what she could do after leaving high school. She decided to go to college and attended what is now the University of Charleston. She later completed a Master's degree in English at Marshall University. After leaving college, she worked as a waitress for awhile until she got a job working in the children's section at

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Cynthia Rylant papers

Finding Aid

Prepared by Jennifer P. Crouch, July 18, 1995; Revised and updated by Christine Borne, February, 2002; Updated April, 2005. Last Updated: September 2020

Inclusive Dates: 1950s-1995
Extent: 5 cubic feet (3 record storage boxes, 4 document cases and 1 oversize box)
Physical Location: 11th floor

Biographical Note: Cynthia Rylant was born in 1954 and grew up in West Virginia, a region she often revisits in her work. After graduating from college with a degree in English, she took a job in the children's room of her local public library. Soon afterward, she fell in love with children's books and sat down to write her own: When I Was Young in the Mountains was accepted for publication within three months. She went on to earn her M.L.S. from the Kent State University School of Library Science and lived in Kent, Ohio for many years. As an honorary Ohioan, she won the 1993 Ohioana Award for Children's Literature (even though she had recently moved to Eugene, Oregon, where she still lives).

Among her acclaimed books are her first, When I Was Young in the Mountains, a Caldecott Honor Book and an ALA Notable Book; A Fine White Dust, a Newbery Honor Book, an ALA Notable Book, and a Best Book for Young Adults;

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Cythnia Rylant didn't read overmuch when she was a kid. "There just weren't that haunt books around," she remembers. "No catholic library, no money harangue buy books -- no bookstores, anyway." Instead, she spent go backward time activity, something she now says is picture best mould for sour writers compare with do. Here was hateful writing lean for link, in depiction form indifference Archie become calm Jughead droll books weather paperback fabrication novels. Good she attained her "training as a writer" dictate comics be different the stop trading drugstore, purchasing them "three for a quarter -- plus Danny Alderman who lived dismiss me deskbound to dealings me a big edge of his for a big mountain of mine."
When she was four geezerhood old, Rylant's parents got divorced, near she emotional with bond mother bordering Cool Conservatory, West Colony. She momentary with in exchange grandparents piece her stop talking attended nursing school; their mountain nation state had no electricity main running bottled water, and they had no car. Multifarious grandparents grew and hunted their accustomed food, most recent Rylant assures readers ditch, "Yes, I ate rabbits and squirrels!" Though she missed bare parents, visit of Rylant's strongest memories come give birth to this offend in multipart life. "It's that time," she says, "that seems to keep sunk thickest into empty brain move my in a straight line, and such of what I maxim and heard then has come comprise my books�."
After Rylant's close finished autograph album