Sally Keehn, Author

I've always been reticent in talking about myself. Perhaps it's because my mother brought me up to be modest and self-effacing even though she was quite a spit-fire herself and, as a teenager, dyed her hair red and all her clothes purple.

It could also be because I was brought up with three loud and boisterous brothers - Bob, Jim and John - who were only too willing to take center stage. Here they are - holding me in a hammerlock at a family reunion in Kentucky. They're a heap of fun. They can tell the wildest stories and oh boy can they play guitar and sing.

When kids ask me why do I write, I have several answers including the one - "With three loud brothers, writing's the only way I could get a word in edgewise." Why, I couldn't even be born without having a brother come along with me! Here I am with my twin brother, John.

We were born on August 11, 1947 in London, England. Why London? My dad, a naval officer, was stationed there at the time.

Because my dad was in the Navy, my family lived in several different places during my first eleven years - England, California, Rhode Island, Virginia and Maryland. In California, John and I had two ducks, Donald and Daisy. They followed us everywhere. How we loved those ducks! In Rhode Island, I fell off a see-saw and broke my arm. In Virginia, I took my first horse back riding lessons. I was so in love with horses. Still am.

My grandfather, who loved horses as much as I did, told me, "Sally, if you'll take two years of riding lessons - which I will pay for - I'll buy you a horse." How I loved my grandfather!

Two years to the day, he took me to the horse dealer's. On the car ride over, he said to me, "Sally, for God's sake, don't fall in love with the first horse you see." Well, I did. I named her UpAnchor after a horse my grandfather once owned. Here she is after I'd had her several weeks. You can still see her backbone that stuck up like a razor blade. You can count her ribs. She'd been almost starved-to-death and terribly abused.

I didn't realize that by taking on an abused animal, you also take on the history of that abuse. The journey this horse and I took together -- learning to love and trust each other -- forms a major thread in my growing up and also in the most autobiographical of all my novels: The First Horse I See.

Not only did I love horses as I was growing up. I also loved reading. Here's my report card from third grade. You can see by my teacher's comments that I loved reading so much that it got me in trouble.

As a teenager, I fell in love with boys. I always had a crush on one boy or another. When I was eighteen, I became a Washington D. C. debutante. One minute, I was in the barn mucking out stalls, the next I was all dolled up in an evening gown and dancing with some tall dark stranger in a tuxedo.

You'd think that with being introduced to "society" I'd get married young. It took me until I was twenty-five to find the man of my dreams. Before I came upon him, I graduated from Hood College in 1969 with a B.A. in English Literature. From there, I went to work for the American Red Cross in their S.R.A.O. program in South Korea. Besides working with

the American troops stationed in Korea, I did volunteer work in the Korean community. Here I am with an adorable little boy I met at a South Korean orphanage.

Since I'd always loved books and reading and kids, I decided to become a Young Adult Librarian. From 1971-72 I attended Drexel School of Library Science. I read so many great books for kids during this time, but I never thought that I could actually write one myself. Writing, I thought, was reserved for the truly talented. I didn't realize until much later that yes, you do need talent to

write, but mostly it's just a whole lot of perseverance and hard work.
I was about finished with library school and intending to work at a library in Turkey, when I met David Keehn - from Reading, Pennsylvania. He was attending the University of Pennsylvania Law School at the time and he swept me of my feet. We married in 1972.

Instead of going to Turkey, I went on to work as a Young Adult librarian in Severna Park, Maryland. I loved the job - connecting kids with books. Dave and I went on to have two kids of our own - our daughters - Alison and Molly. We love them to pieces!