Jerry Spinelli

As a child, Jerry Spinelli wanted to be either a cowboy or a professional baseball player. In high school, however, he stumbled upon writing as a future career path when his poem about a championship football game was published in a local paper. He majored in English at Gettysburg College and also took writing seminars at Johns Hopkins University. After writing four unpublished novels for adults, he once again found his path by accident when one of his stories caught the attention of a children’s publisher. As a result, Space Station Seventh Grade came out in 1982, and from then on, Spinelli wrote exclusively for kids. In 1990, Maniac Magee won the Newbery Medal. Spinelli now lives in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia metro area. He and his wife, Eileen, had six children together, and they now have over 20 grandchildren.