|
|
| I am a man whose dreams have come true, in more ways than one. Since 1981, I have had the pleasure of earning my living solely from works of my own imagination, translated into spoken and written stories. I grew up in a family of storytellers. My family has lived in the mountains of Central Pennsylvania for more than 200 years. My Scots-Irish Great Great Grandparents, Hamilton and Anna Moore, came to Pennsylvania from Northern Ireland in 1798, worked as indentured servants and cleared their own 40-acre farm out of the wilderness along Spring Creek, near Bellefonte, PA in 1801. Everyone in my family, except for me, lives within ten miles of the old family farm. I began writing my first book in 1976. I had graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in Journalism and decided to take a break before I plunged into the adult world of jobs and mortgages and car payments. I moved into a rustic cabin on First Mountain, along Sinking Creek. The cabin had no running water, no indoor plumbing and no central heating. I carried my water in a bucket from the creek and made midnight treks to the outhouse in all kinds of weather and cut endless piles of firewood to feed to the woodstove. I lived in the woods for two and half years. Life is full of strange twists and turns. I thought I was taking a break from life, but I was really going deeper into my own life. While I was living at the cabin, I was essentially living in the same way my ancestors had when they first came to Central Pennsylvania. When I moved to the cabin, my mother, Jeanne Moore, gave me the gift of some sourdough bread starter. All of the bread I baked while I lived in the woods came from that original ball of yeasty starter. Just as the bread rose and was kneaded and finally baked, a story began forming in my mind of a frontier girl who lived along Sinking Creek and baked bread for the wilderness families who were just beginning to clear and settle the valley. That was the beginning for my first book, The Bread Sister of Sinking Creek. It would be seven years before the book was completed and published by Groundhog Press in 1983. I formed Groundhog as a small independent publishing house which produced books and recordings celebrating the richness of the oral tradition. The Bread Sister became the first of a series of three historical fiction novels for children about Maggie Callahan’s adventures on the Pennsylvania Frontier. After more than a quarter century, The Maggie Trilogy is still in print. Because these books are designed to be read-aloud, many teachers used these books in the public schools. Thanks to these books, I have been able to spend over 100 days a year visiting schools in Pennsylvania and surrounding states. I have given more than 5,000 school programs and have told stories to more than a million children, teachers and parents. I enjoyed running my own publishing company but was delighted when I found a literary agent in 1985 and sold the publishing rights to the Maggie books to HarperCollins Publishers. This was the beginning of my mainstream publishing career. I began a wonderful stream of more than 20 literary projects with HarperCollins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Scott-Foresman, Kingfisher, August House, Shambala, Sounds True and several other publishers. I had a chance to write historical fiction novels, folktale collections, science fiction, picture books, how-to books and adaptations of classics. I made audio recordings and digital software which aided families in creating their own storytelling traditions. These book projects made it possible for me to travel to every continent on the earth, except for Antarctica. I continued to use Groundhog Press to produce smaller projects and to distribute my books to schools and libraries. To celebrate 25 years in print, I produced a special hardbound collector’s edition of my six most popular titles. Readers can now order these books directly from Groundhog at discounted prices and have each volume personally autographed by the author (that’s me!). I hope you will agree that this is an irresistible opportunity. I invite you to place an order with us. Thanks for all you do to keep our storytelling heritage alive! |
Contact Robin Moore:
| Please click here to go to the Contact Form. |