Erin Entrada Kelly: Growing up a reader, from Lake Charles, Louisiana

I grew up in a fairly small town in Louisiana called Lake Charles, and you know, I was the only kid in my neighborhood who had an immigrant parent. My mother’s from the Philippines. And so I grew up looking very different from my peers, and having a different cultural experience at home. And that informs a lot of my writing. A lot of my books deal with kids who feel other, or you know, like they don’t quite fit in. And that very much speaks to my experience growing up in the south. When I was young my writing very much emulated the books I was reading. So I had a sweet, valley, high knock off series called “The Golden Valley Twins,” and I had a lot of books that kind of mirror Judy Blume, because she was my favorite author, and I read… I’ve always been a reader for as long as I can remember. When I was young my mother would read me bedtime stories. We read at a lot of “Cat in the Hat” and Marvin Mooney “Will you please Go Now,” and “The Monster at the End of this Book,” and what would usually happen is I wouldn’t be ready to stop reading, so I would take the book and read to her, and she would fall asleep. And I’d just stay up and keep looking at books. So they’ve always been an escape for me.”