SOURCE CITATION
"Cynthia Rylant." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by Simon & Schuster.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Cynthia Rylant is an award-winning children's and young adult author whose prolific body of work includes picture books, poetry, short stories, novels, and nonfiction. With a writing style that has been described as unadorned, clear, and lyrical, the author presents young people's experiences with sensitivity and perceptiveness, branding her protagonists' concerns as legitimate and equally important as those of adults. Rylant's characters tend to be contemplative and set apart from their peers by their situations. Explaining her leaning toward such subjects, the author remarked in Horn Book, "I get a lot of personal gratification thinking of those people who don't get any attention in the world and making them really valuable in my fiction--making them absolutely shine with their beauty." She continued, "I don't ever quite write really happy novels; I don't want to deal with the people who have what they want. I want to deal with people who don't have what they want, to show their lives too."

Critics have suggested that Rylant appears sympathetic to her characters' plights because she also faced uncommon hardships as a child. In her autobiography But I'll Be Back Again: An Album, the author stated, "They say that to be a writer you must first have an unhappy childhood. I don't know if unhappiness is necessary, but I think maybe some children who have suffered a loss too great for words grow up into writers who are always trying to find those words, trying to find a meaning for the way they have lived."

Rylant's parents had a stormy marriage and separated when the author was four years old; she admits that she naively blamed herself for their troubles. The author and her mother moved to West Virginia, where Rylant was left in her grandparents' care while her mother earned a nursing degree. Her father wrote occasionally when she first moved, but the letters eventually stopped. Because none of her relatives spoke about her father, she was afraid to ask questions about him. After years of silence, however, he contacted Rylant. The author dreamed of their reunion, but before it could take place her father, a Korean War veteran who suffered from hepatitis and alcoholism, succumbed to these diseases. He died when she was thirteen. In But I'll Be Back Again, the author stated, "I did not have a chance to know him or to say goodbye to him, and that is all the loss I needed to become a writer."

Unhappiness, however, did not dominate the author's childhood. Rylant enjoyed the rustic West Virginia environment while living with her grandparents in a mountain town where many houses had neither electricity nor running water. The lack of amenities did not bother young Rylant; she felt secure surrounded by equally poor yet friendly, church-going neighbors. When the author was eight years old, she and her mother moved to another West Virginia town named Beaver. In retrospect, she once called this new location "without a doubt a small, sparkling universe that gave me a lifetime's worth of material for my writing."

As an adolescent in this rural setting, though, Rylant began to recognize and become envious of the fact that other people had more material possessions than she and her mother did. In addition, Beaver--which had at first offered adventure--now appeared backward and dull compared to larger cities. Reflecting in her autobiography, But I'll Be Back Again, Rylant remarked, "As long as I stayed in Beaver, I felt I was somebody important. . . . But as soon as I left town to go anywhere else, my sense of being somebody special evaporated into nothing and I became dull and ugly and poor." She continued, "I wanted to be someone else, and that turned out to be the worst curse and the best gift of my life. I would finish out my childhood forgetting who I really was and what I really thought, and I would listen to other people and repeat their ideas instead of finding my own. That was the curse. The gift was that I would be willing to try to write books when I grew up."

Rylant's first book was When I Was Young in the Mountains, a picture book reminiscing about life in West Virginia's Appalachian Mountains which was praised for its simple, yet evocative text and was named a Caldecott honor book. With subsequent picture books, including The Relatives Came, This Year's Garden, and her "Henry and Mudge" series, Rylant has received considerable recognition and awards. The author once said: "I like writing picture books because that medium gives me a chance to capture in a brief space what I consider life's profound experiences--grandmother crying at a swimming hole baptism, a family planting a garden together, relatives coming for a visit. There is a poignancy and beauty in these events, and I don't want to write adult poetry about them because then I'll have to layer it with some adult disillusionment."

Rylant continued her use of poetry in books for older readers. In Waiting to Waltz . . . A Childhood, the author offers an autobiographical collection of thirty free-verse poems which record her coming-of-age. These events include embarrassment because her mother was too busy to join school committees and reckoning with the deaths of both an absent father and a beloved pet. One passage documents the surprising transformation from child to young adult: "Forgetting when / I was last time / a child. / Never knowing / when it / ended." Waiting to Waltz also weaves in events and symbols of the 1960s to produce what critics deemed a vivid re-creation of the era.

Another book of verse, Soda Jerk, combines illustrations by Peter Catalanotto with twenty-eight related poems by Rylant to present the thoughts of a nameless protagonist who works as an attendant at a soda fountain. The title of this work is the slang term for the job. The jerk, as the narrator calls himself, offers commentary on issues ranging from his customers' lives to his fears about the future. Valerie Sayers, writing in New York Times Book Review, remarked that with her short poems, "Rylant manages to shape enough action to fill several short stories and to create a protagonist who is not only likable but charming and engaging." Soda Jerk, the critic concluded, "is full of respect for a boy's powers of observation, and its images, both written and painted, are striking."

In 1985 Rylant published her first novel, A Blue-eyed Daisy. Set in Appalachia, the episodic work is told by eleven-year-old Ellie Farley during the course of a year. The youngest of five daughters, Ellie contends with her apprehensions and conflicting emotions about growing up. For example, she overcomes her fear of contracting epilepsy after witnessing a classmate's seizure; copes with her unemployed, alcoholic father's imperfections and the possibility of his death after an accident; and battles the nervous anticipation of her first co-ed party. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly proclaimed A Blue-eyed Daisy an "exquisite novel, written with love."

Rylant's 1986 novel, A Fine White Dust, was named a Newbery Honor Book. In this work, a deeply religious seventh-grader named Pete believes he has found a human incarnation of God in a roving preacher named Carson. When attending a revival meeting, Pete is mesmerized by Carson's charismatic presence and, after being "saved," agrees to become his disciple. Despite his hesitance to leave his family and friends, Pete reasons that such a sacrifice is needed to fully embrace the holy life. Pete's mission is never fulfilled, however, because the preacher unexpectedly runs off with a young woman. Although he initially feels betrayed, Pete develops a more mature understanding of love and faith.

Another of Rylant's works, A Couple of Kooks: And Other Stories about Love, offers various examples of the emotion. In "A Crush," a mentally handicapped man secretly leaves flowers for a female hardware store worker. An older woman finds love with a man ten years her junior in "Clematis." And in the title story, two teenagers use the nine months of the girl's pregnancy to try to instill their hopes, love, and food preferences on the baby that they will be forced to give up for adoption. Critics commended Rylant for her honest, compassionate portrayal of her subjects' feelings.

With Missing May, a novel for young adults published in 1992, Rylant created what is perhaps her most highly acclaimed book. The story outlines how twelve-year-old Summer, who came to stay with her Aunt May and Uncle Ob in West Virginia after the death of her mother six years before, attempts to save her uncle from despair after the death of his beloved wife. In the midst of his mourning, Ob senses May's presence. Looking for an interpreter, Ob and Summer settle on Cletus, an unusual boy from Summer's class who once had a near-death experience and is, according to Caroline S. McKinney of Voice of Youth Advocates, "as full of the energy for living as Ob is with the numbness of grieving." Through his suggestion, the trio go to Charleston to find a medium at the Spiritualist Church. The trip becomes a quest for each of them. The group reaches Charleston to find that the medium has died. Rather than sinking deeper into despair, Ob decides to take the children to the State Capitol. At the end of the novel, Summer realizes that Ob chooses to go on with his life because he cannot bear to say goodbye to her. McKinney concluded, "Missing May will be passed around by many of us who love beautiful words. It will speak in that warm, flowing West Virginia tongue to young people and old." Betsy Hearne of Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books noted: "Strong nuances of despair and hope create a suspense that forcefully replaces action and that will touch readers to tears." Writing in Booklist, Ilene Cooper observed that "Rylant makes us aware of the possibilities of life, even in the midst of tragedy. There is a freshness here that feels like a cool breeze." Missing May received the Newbery Medal in 1993.

In 1993, Rylant created "The Everyday Books," a series of board books for very young children. In these volumes, Rylant introduces her audience to literature by centering on subjects familiar to them, such as their homes and pets. The first of Rylant's works to include her own illustrations, "The Everyday Books" feature the artist's child-appealing collages. In 1995, Rylant published another self-illustrated title, Dog Heaven. The book is illustrated in bright acrylics that blend naive forms with unusual colors. According to a critic in Kirkus Reviews, the illustrations are "infused with simple doggy joy." The critic concluded by calling Dog Heaven "pure, tender, lyrical without being over earnest, and deeply felt." In 1997, Rylant produced an equally acclaimed companion volume, Cat Heaven.

Rylant has earned equally high praise for her "Little Whistle" series, which features a guinea pig that lives in a toy store; her "High Rise Private Eyes" series, in which animal detectives investigate crimes; and her "Mr. Putter and Tabby" books, which Booklist reviewer Shelley Townsend-Hudson deemed a "delightful" series about the misadventures of a man and his beloved pet cat. In her book of poems for toddlers, Good Morning, Sweetie Pie, Rylant "extols the joys of domestic life from a toddler's eye view" that results in "one big love fest from wakeup to tuck-in," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book "a perfectly delicious outing."

Rylant wrote in her second autobiography, the picture book Best Wishes: "Sometimes your best wishes really do come true. When I was a little girl I used to wish for a pretty house with a big picture window, a faithful dog who loved me, cats, and a chance to do something important. . . . I did a lot of wishing for a lot of things. And when I was grown, I got many of those things. I got the house with the window, the faithful dog, the cats. And I also did something important: I became a writer." In an interview with Anita Silvey of Horn Book, Rylant commented that writing "has given me a sense of self-worth that I didn't have my whole childhood. I am really proud of that. The (books) have carried me through some troubled times and have made me feel that I am worthy of having a place on this earth."

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Surname is pronounced "rye-lunt"; born June 6, 1954, in Hopewell, VA; daughter of John Tune (an army sergeant) and Leatrel (a nurse) Smith; married (divorced); companion of Dav Pilkey (an author/illustrator), since 1989; children (first marriage): Nathaniel. Avocation: Pets, reading, going to movies, watching television, and rearranging the furniture. Education: Morris Harvey College (now University of Charleston), B.A., 1975; Marshall University, M.A., 1976; Kent State University, M.L.S., 1982. Politics: Democrat. Religion: "Christian, no denomination." Addresses: Home--Washington. Agent--c/o Author Mail, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020; Steven Malk, Writers House, smalk@writershouse.com.

CAREER
Writer. Marshall University, Huntington, WV, part-time English instructor, 1979-80; Akron Public Library, Akron, OH, children's librarian, 1983; University of Akron, Akron, OH, part-time English lecturer, 1983-84; Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine, Rootstown, OH, part-time lecturer, 1991-