Five Pages a Day

Peg Kehret, who told of her childhood battle with polio in Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio, now shares the story of her writing career. It began at the age of ten when she wrote and sold the Dog Newspaper. The paper was supposed to feature the tales of local dogs, but mostly it was about her own dog, B.J. After four issues, it folded. But Peg learned a valuable lesson: If she wanted people to read what she wrote, she had to write something interesting. Peg went on to write radio commercials, prize-winning contest entries, magazine articles, plays, and adult nonfiction books before she discovered her true voice as a writer in books for young people."With the same eye for well-chosen details that characterizes her other writing, she mines her experiences for anecdotes young readers will appreciate. . . . Even those kids who don't expect to be writers will enjoy hearing about quirky research she has done for her books and will absorb her recurring theme about...