"Fleischman's picture books, novels, short stories, and poetry are written with consummate skill," noted Cooki Slone in
Children's Books and Their Creators, "and his stylistic range is as varied as is his choice of format." With his first book,
The Birthday Tree, in which a young boy is connected to the tree planted at his birth, Fleischman was recognized as a budding new talent in children's literature. With each successive book he has confirmed that early judgment, writing supernatural mysteries as well as paeans to nature, and through it all paying close attention to the sound of words, to the shape of language.
Born in Monterey, California, in 1952, Fleischman grew up in Santa Monica, the son of the well-known children's author, Sid Fleischman. "Growing up hearing the wonderful works of my father ... read aloud as they rolled out of the typewriter, I was exposed to books," Fleischman noted in School Library Journal, "but was not a reader and certainly had no plans to be a writer." Instead of holing up in libraries as a youth, Fleischman and sisters would climb on their bicycles and explore the streets and alleyways of their beach town. These became foraging expeditions, as the children gathered other people's castaways from trash cans.
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