Marijane Meaker was born in Auburn, New York on May 27, 1927, the daughter of Ellis Meaker, a manufacturer of mayonnaise, and his wife, Ida T. Meaker. An exceptionally prolific author, Meaker writes under a variety of pen names, including Ann Aldrich, M. E. Kerr, M. J. Meaker and Vin Packer. All of her novels for young adults have been written under the name of M. E. Kerr.

Kerr's lifelong major interests have been reading and writing, and she credits her early interest in reading to several role models including her father and her mother. She cites her father as an avid reader of all types of materials and a wide variety of subjects. Among his favorite authors were Dickens, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Kipling, and O'Hara. Her mother encouraged her interest in fiction and in finding out everything possible about real phenomena in order to be...