Janet Taylor Lisle
Janet Taylor Lisle (born 1947) is an American author of children's books and young adult novels that range between fantasy and reality. Early years. Lisle was born in Englewood, New Jersey. She grew up in rural Farmington, Connecticut, and spent her summers in Rhode Island. Growing up with four younger brothers, Lisle and the rest of her siblings were all passionate readers. She was educated at local schools until age fifteen when she entered the Ethel Walker School, a girl's boarding school in Simsbury, Connecticut. Higher education, career, and life. Lisle attended Smith College in  Northampton, Massachusetts and graduated in 1969 with a degree in English. Following graduation, she married and joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1971, she returned to college at Georgia State University to take journalism classes. After an internship at the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, she worked as a reporter for local newspapers in the Atlanta area and later in Westchester County, New York. With a new marriage and the birth of her daughter in 1977, Lisle changed her career path and began to write children's books at home. Her first book, "The Dancing Cats of  Appelsap", was inspired by her own childhood memories. Following this book, she has continued to write for a diverse audience and produced over sixteen novels as well as several works of history for adults. Lisle lives on the Rhode Island coast with her husband, Richard Lisle. Her daughter Elizabeth and two grandchildren live in Berkeley, CA. Writing style. "Lisle continues to write books with widely diverse topics; if she has a trademark, it is her versatility," Anita Silvey wrote about her style in "Children's Books and Their Creators." Over her thirty year career, she has written both realistic novels  and a form of borderline fantasy that blurs the line between reality and imagination. She often draws on her home state of Rhode Island for historical footing. "Black Duck," a Prohibition era story set on the Rhode Island coast uses smuggling events that transpired in her hometown. In "The Crying Rocks," she delves into tragic events in Native American history that took place in southern New England during the 1600s. Her novel "The Art of Keeping Cool," winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, is based on events that occurred in her hometown during World War II. Novels  for younger children show her interest in imagination, especially the imagination of a wounded or lonely child who invents for protection or to find a way to communicate. She often leaves her endings unresolved to open up the meaning of her works. Whether the elves in her Newbery Honor novel "Afternoon of the Elves" are real or inventions of an abandoned child's imagination is left to the reader to decide.