Cynthia Rylant was born on June 6, 1954 in Hopewell, Virginia, to John Tune, a sergeant in the army, and Leatrel (nee Rylant), who would return to school when Cynthia was four and would become a nurse. Tune was an alcoholic, and he and his wife frequently argued. When Cynthia was four years old, her parents split up.

Her father disappeared for a few years, resurfacing in Florida. Cynthia was shipped to her grandparents in Illinois while her mother attended college.

When Cynthia was eight, she returned to her mother to live in southern West Virginia. The insecurities engendered by her feelings that somehow she was responsible for her tortured family life, as well as her impoverished youth, have motivated much of Rylant's writings for children and young adults. She remembers as a child moving in with her mother in the early 1960s and being thrilled...