"I can remember the day--evening rather--when I first learned to read," Aidan Chambers wrote in an essay for the Sixth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators. "That evening in winter I sat staring at a page of print, and suddenly I started to hear the words in my head, making sense. And the sense they were making was a story, with people talking in it, about an adventure on an island. Hearing those printed words suddenly making sense in my head is one of the most vivid and valued moments in my life." From this moment, Chambers was inspired to begin a career in writing and editing young adult books, in addition to theorizing, criticizing, and advocating the same genre. "Whether editing anthologies or writing or reviewing children's books, Aidan Chambers takes his work seriously," asserts Anita Silvey in Children's Books and Their Creators. "He believes children, like adults, deserve good books written just for them."
Born in 1934 in Chester-le-Street, a small town in the northeast part of England, Chambers came from a working class family; his father was a skilled worker with wood and his mother stayed at home.
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