What were famous authors like as kids?

Our childhood experiences shape us into the adults we become. "Born to Write" tells the stories of how six extraordinary children transformed early struggles into spellbinding bedtime reading for kids around the world.

To ease the pain of being ostracized by her classmates, Madeleine L'Engle escaped to an invented world every night in her bedroom. Lucy Maud Montgomery lost her mother as a baby, and her father appeared only sporadically throughout her life. And Philip Pullman, a seasoned traveler by age 10, used his long journeys by ship as inspiration for his remarkable novels.

In "Born to Write, " Charis Cotter chronicles the early lives of these and other much-loved children's writers, including Christopher Paul Curtis, C.S. Lewis and E.B.White, revealing how each author's achievements, losses, triumphs and tragedies helped shape our most beloved books.

Interspersed throughout are sidebars highlighting other well-known children's authors, such as Hans Christian Andersen and Louisa May Alcott, whose works served as inspiration.