Libba Moore Gray- Libba Moore Gray wrote My Mama Had A Dancing Heart which was my favorite book when I was younger. I also have to give props to Raul Colon the illustrator. His illustrations are what first got me interested in art, and Libba Moore Gray's writing first got me interested in both reading and writing.
Ransom Riggs- Ransom Riggs wrote Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which was a very interesting book. However, my favorite part, and the part that initially intrigued me about it was the vintage photographs that the book contained.
James Patterson- James Patterson is probably one of my favorite authors. he has written a ton of books that I love, such as the Maximum Ride series, the Women's Murder Club series, The Lake House, When the Wind Blows, and the Witch and Wizard series. I think that he is a great author because he has an ability to write a great variety of different books that appeal to many different age groups and I have been reading his books since elementary.
J.K. Rowling- J.K. Rowling of course wrote the Harry Potter series that I began reading them when I was eight, in 2001 right before the first movie came out. Originally I only began to read the series to show up my cousin who had been reading them. I was going to show her that I could read all four of the books that had been released at that time in the two or three month span before the movie came out. I succeeded in doing so and was then hooked on the series and now I own the entire series.
Harper Lee- To Kill a Mockingbird is probably one of the best books I ever read in school. We read it for my English class in ninth grade, but I had read it several years before and I really liked it. I think that Harper Lee did a wonderful job writing the book, and made it very powerful and realistic.
Margaret Peterson Haddix- Like James Patterson, Margaret Peterson Haddix has written many books that I love. I read most of her books while I was in elementary, and I especially liked the Shadow Children series, Running Out of Time, the Missing series, and Double Identity.
Kate Morton- The Forgotten Garden is a book I bought last summer to read on my flight and I absolutely loved it. it dealt with a family mystery and secret that spanned three generations and was pieced together by stories from each generation. It was beautifully written and the plot was as dark and fairy-tale like as the stories within it.
Forrest Hutter- Forrest Hutter wrote The Dove and The Pigeon, which is about an angel who fell in love with the devil's daughter and has to fight to keep her out of Hell. Forrest was a couple years older than me and attended the same high school as me so it was cool to see him become an author and to read his book and it showed me that I too could go into writing if I wanted to.
Lois Lowry- Lois Lowry wrote two books that I really love: Number the Stars and The Giver. I read Number the Stars when I was in third or fourth grade and I read The Giver during my senior year of high school and I truly enjoyed both books. They both deal with terrible situations, how humanity has both a light and dark side, and how specific events can affect a person's entire being.
William Durbin- William Durbin was an English teacher at my high school while my parents were in school and still lives on Lake Vermillion near my town. He has written several books, of which my favorites are The Broken Blade, Wintering, The Darkest Evening, and the three books he wrote for the Dear America: My Name is America series. William Durbin includes many traits of northeastern Minnesota in his books which makes them feel very relate-able to myself. One in particular, The Journal of Otto Peltonen deals with the towns in which I live (Bear River and Cook) and other towns on the Iron Range.
