Jerry Spinelli Biography

Maniac Magee About the Author

Jerry Spinelli was born February 1, 1941, in Pennsylvania and still lives in that state. He graduated from Gettysburg College and Johns Hopkins University. He then worked for over twenty years as a technical magazine editor while intermittently trying to publish adult fiction. In 1957, Spinelli married another author, Eileen Mesi, who had six children. Spinelli credits his own childhood adventures and those of his six step children with providing the inspiration for most of his books. He calls the children his "Huckleberry Finns" and says that after living with them for only two months, he began to pay attention to humor from an adolescent point of view. Five years later, he published his first novel, Space Station Seventh Grade. He continued to work as a magazine editor while he wrote four other books for adolescents, eventually leaving his editorial job to pursue his writing full time.

His...
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