I Am the Cat

"When I was very young," says Alice Schertle, "perhaps three or four, I remember sitting with a heavy book in my lap, running my fingers down the printed pages, puzzling over how adults could translate those strange squiggly symbols into the wonderful stories and poems they read to me. Eventually, I did unlock the secret of the squiggles, and I haven't stopped reading since.

Ms. Schertle reads anything and everything, Fiction and nonfiction, but there is a special place in her heart for poetry. "There are things a poem can say that cannot be expressed as effectively in any other way. I love to rind a poem that shows me something, creates an image, perhaps, that is so startling, so original, so unique only one particular poet could have thought of it. But at the same time, the image, the idea, is so true, so right, that I rind myself saying, 'Yes! I knew that!"'

Alice Schertle is the author of more than thirty books for children. Several of the most recent are collections of poetry. "One of the few things as wonderful as reading a good poem is writing one," she says. "I find writing poetry difficult, absorbing, frustrating, satisfying, maddening, intriguing.... I love it. If, at the end of a day of pondering, discarding, rewriting line after line, I can read my poem and say to myself, 'This one works, 'It's been a good day."

When she isn't writing poetry, Ms. Schertle is often working on a picture-book story. She sometimes writes the ending first. "I love to bring a story full circle in a logical and satisfying way," she explains. "I sometimes think of a concluding scene or paragraph or phrase, and build a whole story leading up to it. The plot doesn't have to be extremely dramatic; sometimes very simple situations make the best stories. But familiar or extraordinary, real or imaginary, I hope the stories I write say something both honest and encouraging about people and life and the world we live in. If they provide a chuckle or two along the way, so much the better."

On the days when she isn't writing, Ms. Schertle may lace up a pair of boots and go hiking all day in the mountains. On other days she can often be found visiting schools, talking to classes about the joys of reading and writing poetry and Fiction. A graduate of the University of Southern California and a former elementary school teacher, she has three grown children --Jenny, Katie, and John.

Alice Schertle claims the best way to rind out what she is like is by reading her books, but if more clues are needed, she offers the following list of things she loves: "My family, unusual words, my hiking boots, any kind of squash, old movies, autumn, and cows."