"Mrs. McLaughlin saved me; she introduced me to two things that had given me direction and hope--the love of reading and the theatre," children's author and poet Lee Bennett Hopkins confessed about his elementary schoolteacher in Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS). With his teacher's help and encouragement, Hopkins went on to become a talented teacher, author, and compiler of children's verse collections. He has been termed the "Pied Piper" of poetry by others in the field.

Hopkins was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on April 13, 1938. It was during the Great Depression, and Hopkins' parents named him after Lee Bennett, the lead singer in one of the popular bands on the radio. His family was poor and struggling to make it financially. Yet, for the first ten years of his life, he and his two siblings lived in relative comfort surrounded by a loving extended family. In 1948, all...