Award-winning children’s author Patricia Reilly Giff was interviewed for BookCast by Fairfax County Public Library Director Sam Clay. BookCast is sponsored by the Fairfax Library Foundation.

• The author of more than 60 children’s books, including the Kids of the Polk Street School series, Patricia Reilly Giff has received the Newbery Honor for two of them -- Pictures of Hollis Woods and Lily's Crossing. Her latest book is Wild Girl, about a young horse-loving girl from Brazil and the horse she encounters when she moves to the U.S.



• As a child, her favorite books included Little Women, The Secret Garden, the Black Stallion books, the Sue Barton books and the Nancy Drew series. Giff loved reading so much that while growing up her sister had to grab books out of her hands to get Giff to pay attention to her.



• Giff has been a reading teacher for 20 years, the educational consultant for Dell Yearling and Young Yearling books and an adviser and instructor to aspiring writers.



• When she's not writing, Giff enjoys reading in the bathtub and going to the movies and eating popcorn. She and her husband reside in Weston, Connecticut. They have three children and five grandchildren. In 1990, Giff combined her two greatest loves – children's books and her family – and, with her husband and her children, opened The Dinosaur's Paw, a children's bookstore named after one of her Kids of the Polk Street School novels.



• Giff believes she has no special talents and that "anyone who has problems, or worries, anyone who laughs and cries, anyone who feels can write. It's only talking on paper . . . talking about the things that matter to us."



• About Patricia Reilly Giff