Katherine Paterson
Katherine Paterson has been published steadily since 1973, and has won multiple awards for her work including the Newberry Medal for Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved. Her book, Blueberries for the Queen, was co-written with her husband, John and illustrated by Susan Jeffers.
Katherine’s great respect for the integrity of her readers has endeared her to us all, whether we be children or adults.
Whether it’s setting the story in feudal Japan as in the Master Puppeteer, speaking of the pain of foster care as in The Great Gilly Hopkins, or building friendships and confronting death as in Bridge to Terabithia, beloved children’s author Katherine Paterson weaves her stories around the universal issues of life.
“If you’re a serious writer, you write out of who you are, and what you care about comes out in the writing,” says Paterson.
The daughter of American missionaries, Paterson was born in Hwaian, China, spoke fluent Chinese at the age of five, and as a child was twice forced to depart for the U.S. with her family from that war-torn country.
Paterson came to writing through a sense of responsibility. For four years, while in her twenties she was a Christian education teacher on Shikoku Island, Japan riding a motorcycle to teach in rural churches. She was then offered a scholarship to attend Union Seminary by a church group. While in school she met John, her husband to be, and didn’t return to teaching. When asked by this same church group to write a church school book she agreed because she felt she owed them something. Her first book Who Am I was born and so was her writing career.
The Patersons have called Vermont home for more than a decade. They live in a cluttered brick farmhouse, set high on a hill in Barre Town. True to the theme of using her own life experiences in her work, Vermont is the setting for many of her books.
Although she states that her first seven years of writing led to little in the way of publication, today Paterson is in the enviable position of being sought after to write and lecture. She has twice received the Newberry Medal, the highest award given in this country for children’s literature and The Master Puppeteer and The Great Gilly Hopkins have both received a National Book Award. Her most famous book, Bridge to Terabithia was written after one of her son’s friends died in a freak accident as a child. A Newberry Award winning book, it also holds the honor of being one of the 10 most challenged or banned books in libraries across the country.
How did it come about that a woman, married to a Presbyterian minister for more than 30 years and dedicated to social justice issues and Christian ethics find her books so misinterpreted? The distinction saddens Paterson and is one of the few things about being a writer that frustrates her. Fortunately for children of all ages this frustration does not keep her from writing from her heart. Her newest book is Bread and Roses, Too.
This interview is copyrighted by Patricia Lyon-Surrey
