Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (born January 4, 1933) is an American writer best known for children's and young adult fiction. Naylor is best known for her children's-novel quartet Shiloh (a 1992 Newbery Medal winner) and for her "Alice" book series, one of the most frequently challenged books of the last decade. 2Early life Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born in the U.S.A. She grew up during the Great Depression with her older sister Norma and younger brother John. She has said that she never felt poor, as her parents had a book collection and read stories aloud to her and her siblings until adolescence. Her favorite book as a child was Huckleberry Finn. She began writing her own stories when she was in elementary school. When she was 16 years old, a Sunday school teacher asked her to write a story for the church magazine. She wrote a baseball story named "Mike's Hero" and was paid $4.67 for it. She continued writing, even sending her stories to magazines such as Highlights, Seventeen, and Jack and Jill, receiving two years of rejection letters. Naylor graduated from Joliet Township High School in 1951 and from Joliet Junior College in 195