Two of my favorites when I was very young were The Story of Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese, and I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew by Dr. O’Brien, and Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson. Some of my favorite books – and I still have the dog-eared paperbacks – were It’s Like This, Cat, by Emily Neville, Mrs. I loved anything by Roald Dahl, and still do. Anne of Green Gables and all its sequels by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Little Women and everything by Louisa May Alcott. What books did you love when you were a kid? But I was proud of my paragraph, and I showed it to my older sister, who said, “Maybe you should be a writer when you grow up.” She was my big sister, she knew everything, so naturally, I figured, she must be right. I’m pretty sure I used words like “glossy” to describe the jungle leaves, and “thundering cascade” for the waterfall itself, the kind of stuff no editor would let me get away with today. I found a picture in National Geographic of a jungle waterfall. In sixth grade, I was assigned to find a photo in a magazine and write a descriptive paragraph. Welcome, Julie! Tell us about the first thing you ever wrote that made you think maybe you were a writer. In case you weren’t lucky enough to grow up hanging around Julie’s house in the country like I was, here’s a chance to get to know her a bit – a 2009 Debut Authors feature! We swapped critiques and have been touching base with writer-talk ever since. Her sister Joanna, my friend and a talented writer, too, was in touch with me online and told Julie I’d be in Nashua. At the New England SCBWI Conference two years ago, I heard someone call my name, and there was Julie, all grown up and beautiful and brilliant and writing amazing books for kids. THE AMARANTH ENCHANTMENT is by Julie Berry, who is the little sister of my best friend from junior high school. If you like fantasy with a fairy tale feeling - books like ELLA ENCHANTED - you will absolutely love it. I had the good fortune of reading THE AMARANTH ENCHANTMENT as an early draft, and it was amazing even then.

This is kind of a long story, but first of all, let me tell you that you really need to get this book and read it.

The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry