Phyllis Reynolds Naylor began her prolific writing career at the age of sixteen with her first published short story. For twenty-five years she maintained a humorous church newspaper column for teenagers, and for ten years, a similar one for adults. Both were concerned with philosophical questions, family life, and human relationships. She has also written sixty-seven books and published over two thousand short stories and articles.

Her work appeals to all ages. She has written children's picture books and novels, young adult novels, teenage advice books and adult novels. She has also written an autobiography that details the tragedy of her first marriage to a paranoid schizophrenic man and a second autobiographical account of how she became a writer.

Born Phyllis Dean Reynolds on January 4, 1933, in Anderson, Indiana. "Mine was the most ordinary family in the entire Midwest. Whenever people wrote about middle-class values, mores, income, or politics...