Fairy tales are real. Just ask Gail Carson Levine, author of Ella Enchanted and Dave at Night. Levine was fifty when she published her first novel. A welfare administrator for much of her adult life, she spent nine long years gathering rejections for her picture book submissions. Then, turning a writing project for a class at the New School into a manuscript retelling of the Cinderella story, she hit gold. Published by HarperCollins, Ella Enchanted earned starred reviews from major publications and was gaining word-of-mouth popularity among middle grade readers and even adult readers before the American Library Association waved its Newbery wand, conferring on this first novel the Newbery Honor status. And poof. The world changed for Levine.

"I had already quit my day job by the time I got the award," Levine told Authors and Artists for Young Adults (AAYA) in an interview. "But the Newbery...