"She grew up in a large family during the depression and though she was intelligent and literate she couldn't even finish high school because she had to work." Hansen called her mother "my first teacher." From her father, a photographer from the Caribbean, Hansen learned the art of storytelling. "He entertained my brothers and me with stories about his boyhood in the West Indies and his experiences as a young man in the Harlem of the '20s and '30s," she once explained. "I also learned from him to see the beauty and poetry in the everyday scenes and 'just plain folks' he captured in his photographs."
Writing played an important role in Hansen's life from an early date. "I've always loved books and writing," the author explained in an online interview with Scholastic students. "The love of books came first and writing came easily to me when I was a student. I didn't decide to become an author. I just loved writing, and so I wrote." She acquired a taste for the novels of Louisa May Alcott and the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen, as well as "Alice in Wonderland [which] was my favorite.
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