How did your childhood inspire you to write in the voice of Charlotte?
I was born in the
U.S., but my father was in the Foreign Service, so we moved often throughout
my childhood around Europe and North Africa. When I was ten years old,
Charlotte's age, my family moved to France. We set sail from New York
harbor, bound for Le Havre, and took the boat train to Paris. There, like
Charlotte, I quickly learned to speak French (I went to the French Marymount
School there) and became enchanted with the Normandy countryside, especially
the poppies. It was during our first year in Paris that my mother died
of hepatitis, and while nothing was ever the same after that, we stayed
on there for six years.
Because of my early life in Paris, my childhood memories are very important to me and I turn to them for inspiration. I've kept in touch with my school friends there and return to France whenever I can. It was on one of those trips that I discovered Giverny for myself and saw the wonderful collection of American Impressionist paintings in the Musée Americain. That is when I became inspired to write Charlotte in Giverny.
Your
life was very exciting at a very young age, much like Charlotte's. What
kinds of experiences have you had since your time in France that led you
to the world of children's books?
From Paris, my father's work took us to Tunisia, where I attended first the French Lycée in Carthage and then boarding school at the International School in Geneva, Switzerland. When I was eighteen, my family moved to Tripoli, Libya, while I started my freshman year at Smith College [in the U.S.] After graduation, I worked as a children's book editor for many years before I began writing for children myself.