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April Pulley Sayre

As a child

I grew up on a small mountain in Greenville, South Carolina. As a child, I spent hours picking flowers, watching insects, reading books and writing. Now I do the same thing, only as a career. I have been writing since I first wrote a book about guppies, and sold bedtime stories for pet rocks to my elementary school classmates. All my life I have loved being outdoors in nature. When I was younger, I rode horses, snow-skied and climbed a lot of trees. We had a very tall white pine tree I loved to climb. The only problem was that the pine tar got stuck in my hair and had to be cut out. I have never minded getting messy or muddy if it meant I could look out from a tree-top, or hold a turtle, or see a new bird.

As an adult

For many years, I struggled over whether to be a scientist or a writer. At Duke University, I studied biology and anthropology. I worked with lemurs. Yet I wrote for student publications at the same time. After university I worked at the National Wildlife Federation and at the National Geographic Society. My husband and I travelled to Madagascar and lived in a rain forest field camp, because we thought we still might want to be scientists. However, I found I was more interested in writing stories and essays about the forest than chasing lemurs and analysing scientific data. So I devoted myself to writing full-time. I have now written over fifty books for young readers, including If You Should Hear a Honey Guide and One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. It’s been exciting to see my books translated into French, Dutch, Japanese and Korean. I visit schools all over the US as a featured author, speaking to 8,000 students each year. When my husband, Jeff, and I are not off bird-watching in Panama or Peru, we’re perfecting our dragonfly water garden and butterfly-hummingbird garden at home in South Bend, Indiana.

As an artist

Most of my work has to do with science, especially plants and animals. I also love geography – studying maps and figuring out where the world’s mountains and lakes are, and knowing why these places are dry, cold, snowy or wet. My favourite part of the work is researching – travelling to rainforests, reading books and magazines, calling people on the phone, and visiting museums, parks and aquaria. I also love writing. At times the writing is joyful and comes in a great whoosh of inspiration, at other times the writing is difficult and takes many drafts and lots of hard work. I write and rewrite until I’m satisfied with every paragraph. The sound of language is very important to me. I like to play with works and use their rhythm and subtle rhyme to make my books delicious to read. I also love to give my work a twist that makes people gasp in wonder, or laugh out loud.

Things you didn't know about April Pulley Sayre

  1. My favourite author is Tamora Pierce.
  2. I have snorkelled over nurse sharks at night.
  3. I used to be a competitive ice-skater.
  4. I make my own dill pickles, by my grandmother’s recipe.
  5. I secretly want to be a songwriter.
  6. When I was two, a zoo goat ate my dress.
  7. I make wire sculptures in winter.
  8. Dragonflies often land on me.
  9. I have heard fish calling from below my canoe in the Amazon river.
  10. I have been pooped on by over twelve animal species (but not at once).

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