Born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on February 1, 1941, Jerry Spinelli's first taste of celebrity made him eager to continue writing: "After my high school football team won a big game, I went home to write a poem about it while the town celebrated and blared in the streets. The poem was published in the local newspaper, and I've been a writer ever since."

After high school, Spinelli continued his education with degrees from Gettysburg College (A.B., 1963) and Johns Hopkins University (M.S., 1964), and he attended Temple University in 1964. His career included editing an engineering magazine published by the Chilton Company and military service before becoming a full-time writer. In his job with Chilton his writing was of a technical nature, which helped him pay the bills, but he wanted to write novels. He spent his lunch hour in a small, private room writing adult fiction...