"I used to think, when I first started writing, that writers were like wells, and sooner or later we'd use up what had happened to us and our children and our friends and our dogs and cats, and there wouldn't be anything left," reveals Betsy Byars in an essay for Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS). "I imagine we would if it weren't for that elusive quality--creativity. I can't define it, but I have found from experience that the more you use it, the better it works."

This creativity is scattered profusely throughout the children's and young adult books of Byars' prolific career. Among these creative works are her strong, realistic award-winning novels The Midnight Fox, The Summer of the Swans, The Pinballs, and The Night Swimmers. In these works, as well as several others, Byars presents "real" lonely or alienated children and young adults coping with...