I grew up in Melrose, Massachusetts, a beautiful city north of Boston. This postcard shows Main Street, Melrose in the early 1900s. Almost all of the buildings are still there. The trolley tracks are gone, and the tower on City Hall (on the left) was removed long ago; the rest of the building remains. My first paying job was at Melrose Public Library, just a few blocks from this intersection. I worked in the Children's and the Reference Departments and that's how I learned about children's books, and research.

My family lived at 105 Green Street for forty-four years. The house is about 100 years old now. I used to make long chains with the yellow leaves of the ash tree in the front yard. (Lots of leaves, too many leaves to rake!) On hot summer days, I sat in the screened porch and played with my dolls, or read my library books and ate a Popsicle. The black sign on the railing is my father's "lawyer's shingle"--it is now in my study where I write.

Here's the proof—I was in one "beauty contest" in my life. I was about eighteen months old. My mother said she didn't even know I was entered in the contest when my picture was taken; she happened to walk by the photographer's window later and saw this certificate about her cute kid! (well, I was cute back then.) No prize, just the certificate.

I'm the oldest of the seven children in our family. Three girls and then four boys. Here, my sister Maureen is hitching a ride on my tricycle, while Barbara leads the way. We're about 5, 4, and 3 years old. My mother, an excellent seamstress, made most of our clothes and we wore sunsuits to play in the summer. Mum made three of everything. Obviously, I've outgrown the sunsuit that matches my sisters'.

On this drawing, my mother wrote "Linda's first school picture--Sept. 1955" I was in kindergarten at Horace Mann School in Melrose. I drew my mother (see, red hair?), a tree, flowers, and a bright yellow sun. I still draw people this way and that's why I don't illustrate my books! (Some of my kindergarten collage art appears in the book I wrote about the circus.)

This children's book about Pocahontas was the book that "hooked" me on facts. I read it many times (I still do) and I went to the library to find more books about our native peoples. We didn't have bookstores in Melrose, so my mother bought books like this one at our local grocery store. She kept them in a special drawer in her dresser. At bedtime we'd listen for Mum to go into her bedroom and open the drawer (I can still hear the smooth noise it made!) If we heard the drawer, we got excited—there was a new book to listen to that night!

Some of my earliest writing was for our Horace Mann Elementary School newspaper. I wrote for the "5-G Gazette"— the "G" referred to Miss Madeleine Goebel, my Grade 5 teacher. (I dedicated America Votes to Miss Goebel who still lives in Melrose and is now a close friend.) I wrote the Page 3 story about the up-coming flower show and music festival. The cover story of this "Gazette", from May, 1962, was BIG, BIG news about America's first astronaut Alan B. Shepard's trip into space. (Notice we had to handwrite and mimeograph our newspaper—no computers for students then.)

I have always enjoyed collecting old postcards because they show us so much about people and places long ago. I like to spend a while looking at every face and piece of clothing in a photo-postcard like this one, of the students in a one-room school in Indiana in 1911. There are nineteen children, of all ages and in many grades, and one very stern-faced teacher. Some of the boys have bare feet; the girls have thick black stockings and buttoned boots. I wonder what became of these students after they left school?

Boston, Massachusetts is one of my favorite cities in North America. Here's another of my postcards. It was mailed one hundred years ago, in 1904. "Dear Millie," it says. "All these buildings are in 'Copley Square', Aunt Fannie." If you go tomorrow to visit Boston, you can see all but one of these buildings; the Art Museum was demolished and a new Museum of Fine Arts was built. I used to study at this Public Library; it has a lovely outdoor fountain in the middle of the building. Trinity Church is built on a swamp; giant oak poles sunk below ground support the huge brick building.

I first rode on Boston's Swan Boats when I was about five years old, and every time I've visited the city since then, if it's a summer day, I enjoy another ride on the boats. My visit is not complete unless I do! If you visit the Boston Public Gardens, where the swans "live," you will stand on the same dock that's shown in this1908 postcard. Back then, young men in dark suits and hats provided the power for the boats to glide around the pond; they are pedal-powered, just like a bicycle. The Swan Boats have been ferrying passengers around the pond for over one hundred years.

Here is a Swan Boat today. If you compare the 1908 photo with this 2003 photo, you'll see that the boats haven't changed much in one hundred years. The college students who pedal the boats as their "summer job" work, don't have to wear those hot, dark suits and hats (and young women pedal some of the boats--that's something a girl would never have been allowed to do in 1908!) The swan is made of layers of metal sheeting, enameled white. Look back at the old postcard--you can see the swan has been removed. You can see the driver's seat and the wheel. Ah, when I look at this photo I can hear the breeze rustling the willow leaves that touch the pond, and can hear the ducks that crowd up against the boat.

Okay, every author should have at least one weird high school photo, and this is mine. I went to Melrose High School during the "Swinging Sixties," the 1960s, that is. Loud music (the Beatles and the Rolling Stones), crazy contests (paint the entire body of a new car for a dealership contest, face and body-painting, too), short skirts (my skirt then looks long when I think of the skirts I see in cities now) and great new vocabulary words (Flower Power, groovy, and wicked). I wrote for The Imprint, the high school newspaper, and the Melrose Free Press, the city paper. The Imprint sponsored a school dance called "The Psychedelic Sunflower." (Get it? Flower power??) As an editor of the paper, I had to make a bold statement at the dance with my outfit. (Go ahead, laugh! It IS pretty funny.) I made the dress (looks more like a daisy, doesn't it?) and the groovy thing about it was that I body-painted the stem down my leg and foot to complete the look. I used poster paint, and it dried and cracked and got itchy during the dance. Like those orange plastic earrings?? The very "in" short hair? The wild drapes in my parents' living room? I look like I'm ready to date Austin Powers!

When I'm visiting a school to discuss one of my books about wars and our veterans, I'm often asked by the students if anyone in my family served in the armed forces. Yes, indeed. My grandfather fought in the First World War and my father, Joseph J. Granfield, seen in this photo, served in the Second World War. He enlisted in the United States Army Air Force right after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He left the USAAF after the war ended.

I like to encourage the young people I meet to collect the stories and display the photos of their families' veterans all year round, not just in November. Please use the "Veteran's Interview Sheet" in the Activities part of this webpage if you'd like to learn more about a veteran in your family or community. Every Day Is Remembrance / Veterans Day.

Another question I'm often asked in schools is "do you have any kids?" Here's the proof. In this family photo from 2007 you see me, my husband Cal, our daughter Devon and our son Brian.

I couldn't write my books without the love and support of Cal, Devon and Brian. You'll notice they are mentioned in every book I write, in the acknowledgments. That page is filled with the names of a lot of helpful, caring people. Every author and illustrator of children's books need that kind of help and support in order to complete any book.

photo by Studio Anka