Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was born January 4, 1933, in Anderson, Indiana, the daughter of Eugene S. and Laura Schield Reynolds. Her midwestern upbringing and summer visits to her grandparents in rural Maryland have provided colorful backdrops for many of her stories.

As a young girl during the depression years, this prolific writer wrote stories on the blank side of used paper she found in the trash can. At the age of sixteen, Naylor was asked by a former teacher to write a story for a Sunday school paper, and she discovered she could be paid for doing what she loved best. By the time she attended college, she earned a large part of her tuition money by selling her writing to magazines. To date she has written some two thousand magazine stories and articles.

Between graduating from Joliet Junior College in 1953 and obtaining a psychology degree...