Despite the success of her work, Wersba has always been pestered with the question of why she confines her talents to writing for young people, instead of trying her hand at adult fiction or plays. "Why write for children"" Wersba mused in her autobiographical essay for Something About the Author. "Because the form is tantalizingly short, and thus tantalizingly difficult. Because the form implies hope. Because those of us who use this form still experience our childhood in strong and passionate ways. There is no chalk line on the sidewalk with childhood on one side and maturity on the other. It is all the same life, it is all one, and the best children's writers know that they are writing for the child in the adult, and the adult in the child."
Wersba was born in 1932 in Chicago to Kentucky native Lucy Jo Quarles, who had married Robert Wersba, of Russian-Jewish heritage. It was an ill-fated match, and Wersba recalled being affected at a young age by the tense atmosphere in her home. She spent her early years in a suburb of San Francisco, and was a somber child by her own admission, a loner, someone who spent long hours dreaming of escape.
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