Susan Lynn Meyer

By day, Susan Lynn Meyer is an English professor at Wellesley College. There she specializes in Victorian and American literature and teaches students to write with clarity and power. At night and on the weekends, she writes books for children. Her novels, BLACK RADISHES and SKATING WITH THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, awarded Sydney Taylor honors, were inspired by her father's childhood as a Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied France and then as a war refugee in New York. Her picture book NEW SHOES, an NAACP Image Award Nominee, is about two girls in the pre-civil rights era who discover that because of the color of their skin, they aren't allowed to try on shoes in a shoe store--and about their triumphant response. Sometimes Meyer's children's books are on lighter subjects. Her latest picture book, MATZAH BELOWSTAIRS, is about a family of mice who are unable to forage the matzah they need for Passover because the family above them has started keeping their apartment tidy! Meyer's books have won many awards and honors. She lives with her family, including her opinionated cat, outside Boston. There she enjoys seeing baby goats and lambs born in the spring, smelling the aroma of boiling maple syrup mixed with wood smoke in sugar shacks, kayaking, visiting historic writer's houses, and searching every fall for a perfect, just-dipped caramel apple.