Teacher-turned-author Colby Rodowsky was already into middle age when she wrote her first young adult novel in 1976. "I was about forty, and at that time I thought if you hadn't done anything by forty, you never would. Now I know a lot better," Rodowsky told Jean W. Ross in an interview in Contemporary Authors. In the two decades that she has been writing, Rodowsky has produced sixteen books and has won numerous literary awards. In the process she has earned a reputation as one of America's most consistently interesting and entertaining authors of novels for young adults. Critics have praised her talent for bringing to life fresh, empathetic characters who grapple with real-life situations, difficult people, and the uncertainties of growing up in a society where values are shifting and uncertain.

Colby Rodowsky was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where she lived for a time in a...